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Family member urges preserving Island Home skilled nursing facility
Summary
Sally Ann Austin testified during public comment that the Island Home provides essential skilled nursing and in-house medical care for dementia patients and warned that its closure would force residents to move off-island, causing financial and social upheaval.
Sally Ann Austin, 19 Surfside, said the Island Home is a skilled nursing facility whose loss would force families to move off-island and separate loved ones.
Austin, who said she has been the hairdresser at the Island Home for seven years and that her mother is a resident, told the meeting the facility provides secure care for people with advanced dementia and other conditions. "This is a skilled nursing facility," she said, adding that "my mother has later stage dementia, Alzheimer's" and that at a nursing home "you have a secure building, so they're not wandering and escaping." She noted the Island Home has "an in house doctor," reducing the need to transport residents for medical visits.
For Austin, the stakes are personal. She listed relatives who have lived at the Island Home over the past two decades and said losing the facility would force her family to move her mother and father off the island. "If Island Home was to close and my mother was still alive, my dad and I would have to move off island because I'm not gonna separate them at this stage of life," she said, saying the move would require private-pay nursing and new housing off-island.
Austin compared care at the Island Home favorably with an off-island facility in Yarmouth, recounting that a grandmother's temporary stay there was "so subpar" compared with the Island Home. While she acknowledged "bumps along the way" at the Island Home, she characterized those as rare and said the overall care there was strong and provided social activity that home care often lacks: "When you keep somebody at home, they don't have activities. They don't have people coming in. There's not other people there."
She urged the community and officials to preserve the Island Home, saying island residents have previously funded public infrastructure and should not leave elderly neighbors without local skilled nursing. Her remarks were delivered during the meeting's public comment period; the transcript contains no formal action or vote regarding the facility.
