Colleen Parker – The Phillips Residence

Phillips Residence is a not -for- profit Licensed Community Care facility offering supportive care for people in Western PEI who need assistance with daily living. Our caring staff help with personal care, medication management, laundry and serve high-quality meals to our residents. We are always cognisant that this is their home; we are privileged to share it with them and provide the support they need.

Over the past five years, with the help of the Rural Action Center, and particularly CBDC Western PEI, we have undertaken two major renovation initiatives to expand our services.

In recognition of the aging demographic and the increase of available apartments in Alberton, we embarked on a project to convert 5 apartments to 10 high end Community Care rooms in 2020.

As an organization, we approached the staff at the Rural Action Centre with our business plan to seek financing to proceed with what we called Conversion #1.

Maxine and Lucille at CBDC Western PEI could not have been more helpful, and provided the financing for the 2020 project.

Then again in 2023, we planned to convert 2 more apartments to provide an additional 4 community Care rooms to our offering. I wasn’t even sure if I should ask again, at the Rural Action Centre, but I did. Again, they were able to support us, with Conversion #2 project.

We currently are a 34 -bed facility, thanks to the support of RAC.

The staff at the Rural Action Centre are always an absolute pleasure to deal with, and they are very valuable for small business in West Prince. If we did not have the services and supports at the Rural Action Centre, many businesses would not get off the ground. They help where major banking institutions will not.

In addition to business financing, the Rural Action Centre and the CBDC offer many free workshops to support businesses. I have attended several over the years that help inform my practice as a manager. At this point, it would be impossible to list them all. A few that stand out were the opportunity to attend a Toastmasters supported program, Labour law, Human Resource specialist, and many more. I certainly would like to attend more than my operational demands allow.

CPR/First Aid certification is required by all our staff with commencement of employment with us. Most new employees take this training through the RAC which is a huge help to new staff and me as the employer.

I appreciate being on the email list. I can check my daybook and schedules to confirm the possibility of attendance for myself or my staff on any given day that there is an opportunity for education.

Phillips Residence is just one business that wouldn’t be where we are with expansion of services without RAC. I know there are many businesses that would attest to the same.