The long awaited Poinciana long-term mental health facility has not yet received an occupancy licence and is still undergoing inspections by the Building Control Unit, according to Health Minister Sabrina Turner.
Construction of the three main buildings – a cafeteria, administration building, and a coffeeshop/workshop which doubles as a hurricane shelter – and nine cottages, where patients will be housed, was completed in September.
Turner, speaking during the budget debate last week, said Poinciana is expected to open early next year.
She said the Building Control Unit was carrying out inspections of the site and work is under way by her ministry staff on the operational needs of the facility “to mitigate any further delay when the certification of occupancy is issued”.
Delays
There has been repeated delays in the construction and opening of the facility, which broke ground in October 2019. It was initially slated to be completed by December 2021, but the COVID-19 pandemic knocked this timeline off course.
Prior to the groundbreaking, there had also been numerous, years-long delays in getting Cayman’s first long-term facility for patients with mental health issues off the ground.
Currently, there is a small unit at the Cayman Islands Hospital, which mostly offers short-term care for mental health patients, though there is at least one long-term patient there. Other patients who require long-term care are sent overseas.
Once open, the $15 million, 15-acre facility’s nine cottages will each be able to house up to six people.
In response to a question from Leader of the Opposition Roy McTaggart in a Finance Committee meeting last week, Turner said, the facility is still in the hands of the Public Works Department.
“So, officially, it has not yet been passed on or handed over to the Ministry of Health and Wellness,” she said. “We have been reliably informed that that is expected to happen in the first quarter of 2024, that’s the handover, and then shortly thereafter we will be more than happy to do a public PR on when it will be up and operational.”
In June, the ministry had said it expected the property to handed over to it by the end of September.
Marcia Amoy Mullings-Thompson has been hired as director of Poinciana. She is the former head of Jamaica’s Bellevue Hospital, the largest psychiatric institution in the Caribbean.
Recruitment of other staff for the facility is ongoing, Turner told lawmakers last week.
She also stated that employment opportunities for Caymanians at the facility are also being explored, with the planned development of a psychiatric nursing assistant training programme. She said the programme which would be offered, free of charge, to any Caymanian over the age of 18 who met the training requirements.
Those who complete the training programme would be eligible for employment at the East End facility, she said.
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