Four Months From Closing: The State Steps In to Save a Catholic Foundation’s Home for Abandoned Elderly

• St Monica’s Home for the Abandoned and Elderly faced closure as donations fell
• The home, run by the St Patrick’s Foundation, cared for 18 elderly residents
• Leaders estimated it could last only about four months without help
• Minister Desmond McKenzie said the government did not want the facility to close

In June 2023 a home for abandoned elderly people in St Catherine was close to shutting its doors. The Jamaica Observer reported that St Monica’s Home for the Abandoned and Elderly could keep running for only about four months without help, as donations had fallen.

The home is run by the St Patrick’s Foundation, the non-profit human and community development organisation founded in 1994 by the late Monsignor Richard Albert. It cared for 18 elderly residents, people with nowhere else to go. The foundation also runs an early childhood centre and human resource centres in Kingston.

The government stepped in. Local Government Minister Desmond McKenzie told a post-Cabinet press briefing: “We don’t want the facility to be closed.” He said the government would either take over operating responsibility or move the residents into existing government infirmaries.

Hermine Metcalfe, chair of the St Patrick’s Foundation, was cautiously hopeful. “If the ministry can provide assistance, at least it would give us the ability to manage,” she said, adding that government support could allow the home to admit more vulnerable elderly people.

Jamaica’s population is ageing, and some elderly people have no family able to care for them. Church-founded homes like St Monica’s fill a gap the State cannot fully cover, but they depend on donations that can dry up. When they close, the residents do not disappear; the cost simply shifts to public infirmaries or to families who may not be able to cope. For churches, the lesson is that housing the elderly needs steady income as well as goodwill. For the diaspora, many of whom have elderly relatives in Jamaica, supporting homes like this, or planning care for their own parents, is part of looking after family land and family members alike.

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