Facility holds great promise
Published 9:05 pm Monday, June 1, 2015
I haven’t yet visited the new assisted living facility on East Washington Street that’s in the same building as a previous one that — to say the least — had a lot of problems.
But my newsroom colleague Tracy Agnew has done so, and her story in Friday’s newspaper on Tabernacle Gardens tells us it has a lot of promise.
The predecessor, Oakwood Assisted Living, had so many problems because its owner, who had a string of such facilities in Hampton Roads, seemed to care more about making money than providing care for society’s most marginalized.
But the chickens have come home to roost for Scott Schuett, who filed for bankruptcy after the state moved to close down his cash cows.
There’s scant solace in that for the family of Violet Compton, brutally beaten inside Tabernacle Gardens by a mentally disturbed fellow resident. Her family, who believes the attack precipitated her death nine months later, filed a wrongful death lawsuit alleging negligence.
The family’s attorney, Stewart Gill, says he’s applied for a default judgment, but Schuett has simply added Violet Compton’s estate as a debtor, tying up the process.
William Ruffin won’t derive much solace from Schuett’s downfall. The man, who was hearing voices when he attacked Compton, was ruled not guilty of aggravated malicious wounding by reason of insanity.
He reportedly remains in a state institution. For the rest of us, I guess there’s solace that he’s not still in a place like Oakwood, where he never should have been in the first place.
For the opening of Tabernacle Gardens, renovations to the building have been extensive, with new plumbing, ceilings, sprinkler system, fire-monitoring system and heating, ventilation and air conditioning system.
Each room has new hardwood furniture and, soon, cable television.
And that’s just the start.
Pastor Ben Fitzgerald III, who leads the neighboring Tabernacle Christian Church, said it would have the highest number of nurses per patient for any such facility in the area, and a full-time activities director will make sure residents have a busy calendar.
Encouragingly, Fitzgerald said Tabernacle Gardens would take only those residents it knows it can care for. That may be its most important departure from Oakwood.
Schuett always argued that, while his facilities weren’t perfect, none ever are, and he was at least providing a home for society’s forgotten.
Meanwhile, the best thing I’ve read about Tabernacle Gardens is its structure: owned by a nonprofit with “a diverse board of directors, many of whom are not affiliated with the church.”
It sounds like it should have every chance of rising above the fate of Oakwood.