BY HEIDI ULRICHSEN

When 25-year-old Shawn Venasse of North Bay was diagnosed with cerebral palsy at eight months of age, his mother, Lori, felt very much alone.

At the time, North Bay did not have a children’s treatment centre to help Shawn with treatment to improve the quality of his day-to-day life.

The province’s 21 children’s treatment centres serve children and youth up to 19 years of age with moderate or severe disabilities. The disabilities might be physical, developmental or communicative. They provide therapy for children on-site, in schools or in the community.

“In our day, we had a few professionals helping Shawn here in North Bay, but most of the care for disabled kids was in Toronto. You spent a lot of time travelling back and forth to Toronto,” Venasse said.

“Even locally within North Bay, the specialists were spread out within the city. You would go over here for one specialist, and over there for another specialist.”

Venasse is thrilled North Bay is now home to One Kids Place, a children’s treatment centre that opened in 2005 in a temporary location - a renovated restaurant on Stockdale Rd. While the current location is less-than-ideal for disabled children, she said she’s happy it exists at all.

The centre, which employs 60 professionals, including physiotherapists, occupational therapists, speech pathologists and social workers, also has locations in Huntsville and Parry Sound. It serves 1,500 children in the region.

One Kids Place, along with another new children’s treatment centre in Simcoe York, were the first such facilities to open in Ontario in 30 years.

The other major communities in Northern Ontario - Sudbury, Timmins, Sault Ste. Marie and Thunder Bay - have all had their own children’s treatment centres for years.

“This is amazing because when a child is diagnosed, parents only have one door that they have to walk through,” Venasse said. “They talk to one person, and that person says ‘Let’s see how we can set up a team to help your child reach his potential’.”

Therapeutic programs for children used to be spread out over various institutions in the city. Now, they’re all located at One Kids Place.

For example, the North Bay Parry Sound District Health Unit used to administer speech pathology services for children. It now operates at the children’s treatment centre.

Under construction

Construction on a new $14 million building for One Kids Place on McKeown Ave. in North Bay started in February, and will be completed in June 2009. The building will be about one kilometre away from the future site of the North Bay Regional Health Centre.

A capital campaign was launched in February to raise part of the construction costs.

Contributions from the province, the City of North Bay, the North Bay Rotary Club and McDonald’s Restaurants have already covered all but just under $2 million of the price tag.

The new 47,000-square foot building has been specifically designed for disabled people, with seven-foot-wide hallways wide enough for two wheelchairs to pass with room to spare, said Judy Sharpe, executive director of One Kids Place.

It also has a gym for physical activities, several therapy rooms and a teleconference link so the North Bay centre can keep in touch with colleagues at its branches in Huntsville and Parry Sound.

Besides one-on-one therapy, One Kids Place provides clinics on subjects such as feeding and swallowing, as well as services such as therapeutic recreation.

“We had lots of discussion with a parent resource group when we were designing the facility,” said Sharpe.

“We didn’t look at what the existing standard is, because that’s just the existing standard. That doesn’t mean it’s what kids need, or what is family friendly for parents maneuvering wheelchairs in and out of a facility.”
North Bay’s four pediatricians have agreed to move their practices into the new building, an arrangement unique in the province, she said.

“With some children’s treatment centres, the pediatrician will come in one day a week and hold a clinic. Here, the pediatricians work with the staff and some of our partners as required. I think it’s a coup for our kids.”

The new site will also include an office for the Nipissing Association for Disabled Youth (NADY), a registered charity with a mandate to improve and implement services for developmentally and physically challenged children and young adults.

The Near North District School Board is also working with the children’s treatment centre to run a school readiness program on site. The new building will include two classrooms designed for children with special needs.

“We can bring young kids aged three and four in here who would normally go into a junior kindergarten program at a school and not be successful because the environment isn’t structured in a way that they can manage,” said Sharpe.

“We’re going to work with our school board to help prepare kids in an environment that is more conducive to these children’s needs, with all the therapeutic benefits of having pediatricians and therapists and a therapeutic recreationist on site.”

www.onekidsplace.ca
www.nady.ca
www.oacrs.com