The So­ci­ety of St Vin­cent de Paul (SVP) has re­fut­ed neg­a­tive so­cial me­dia mes­sages sur­round­ing the Fin­bar Ryan Geri­atric Home which it man­ages and op­er­ates.

New­ly-elect­ed Pres­i­dent of the So­ci­ety, Nigel Phillip in a me­dia re­lease is­sued on Mon­day re­as­sured that “those in our care are treat­ed with love, dig­ni­ty, and re­spect.”

Phillip al­so as­sured that the 35 res­i­dents of the Fin­bar Ryan Home are ful­ly cared for and fed, “which was con­firmed most re­cent­ly by a vis­it from In­spec­tors from the Di­vi­sion of Age­ing on Oc­to­ber 13. Fur­ther, all res­i­dents of the home are and have al­ways been, ac­ces­si­ble to their im­me­di­ate fam­i­ly and friends.”

Phillip ex­plained that like many oth­er non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions (NGO), the So­ci­ety has been ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed by the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic and lock­downs, re­sult­ing in dras­ti­cal­ly re­duced rev­enue streams.

He added that while the care of some of the res­i­dents is par­tial­ly fund­ed by their pen­sions or fam­i­lies the care pro­vid­ed for a large num­ber of the res­i­dents is sub­sidised or fund­ed in full by the So­ci­ety and con­tri­bu­tions made by car­ing cit­i­zens.

“As an or­gan­i­sa­tion ded­i­cat­ed to serv­ing the poor by mod­el­ling the ac­tions of Je­sus, the So­ci­ety of St Vin­cent de Paul has played and will con­tin­ue to play a vi­tal role in as­sist­ing the poor­est of the poor with­in our na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty. We of­fer sin­cere thanks and ap­pre­ci­a­tion to all of our ded­i­cat­ed mem­bers, staff and ‘Friends of Fin­bar Ryan Com­mit­tee’ who have all, as un­sung he­roes, pro­vid­ed un­stint­ing ser­vice and ded­i­ca­tion to the cause,” Phillip said.

“We al­so ac­knowl­edge the na­tion­al net­work of 65 in­de­pen­dent­ly run SVP Con­fer­ences and their ded­i­cat­ed and com­mit­ted mem­bers, who tire­less­ly and qui­et­ly serve Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he added.

Last week Fri­day, the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices in a press re­lease, sought to dis­tance it­self from any con­nec­tion or af­fil­i­a­tion to the Fin­bar Ryan Geri­atric Home in Good­wood Gar­dens, Diego Mar­tin, af­ter a so­cial me­dia post al­leged­ly high­light­ed de­plorable con­di­tions res­i­dents at the home are forced to live in.

The Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment stat­ed the Fin­bar Ryan home is a pri­vate­ly owned fa­cil­i­ty and does not re­ceive sub­ven­tions from the gov­ern­ment but is man­aged and op­er­at­ed by the So­ci­ety of St Vin­cent de Paul, a non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion that falls un­der the Ro­man Catholic Arch­dio­cese.

It did in­di­cate that of­fi­cials vis­it­ed the home in May and a meet­ing was held in Sep­tem­ber “re­lat­ed to guid­ance to im­prove stan­dards of care.”

Fol­low­ing re­cent re­ports, the min­istry said last week, “in­ves­ti­ga­tors from the Di­vi­sion of Age­ing vis­it­ed the Fin­bar Ryan Home and re­port­ed that the res­i­dents were in rea­son­ably good health and did not re­quire ur­gent med­ical at­ten­tion.”

The home shot in­to the spot­light af­ter Pro­gres­sive Em­pow­er­ment Par­ty po­lit­i­cal leader Phillip Ed­wards Alexan­der record­ed a live video on his Face­book page where he al­leged that the fa­cil­i­ty had not been re­ceiv­ing ad­e­quate fund­ing and that res­i­dents there were not be­ing cared for prop­er­ly.

He al­lud­ed that this all stemmed from the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment “fir­ing St Vin­cent de Paul” which man­aged the now closed-down the Cen­tre for So­cial­ly Dis­placed Per­sons (CS­DP), lo­cat­ed at River­side car park in Port-of-Spain.

The min­istry had raised con­cerns about how the cen­tre was be­ing man­aged by St Vin­cent de Paul, which the So­ci­ety de­nied.

Mean­while, Pres­i­dent of the So­ci­ety Nigel Phillip said the So­ci­ety wel­comes any fi­nan­cial sup­port that con­cerned cit­i­zens wish to pro­vide to as­sist the home in pro­vid­ing care for the el­der­ly in our com­mu­ni­ty.

Any­one wish­ing to as­sist can call the St Vin­cent de Paul of­fice at 625-3562.