New community health centre in Timmins serves francophone population

A new francophone community health centre is now open in Timmins and serves more than 1,700 French-speaking patients.

It’s modern, many services are offered and the 22 employees who work there speak French. It’s the Centre de Sante Communautaire de Timmins.

“We do have a primary care, program or suite that offers primary care to our patients and that entails physicians, nurse practitioners, aunts, social workers, dietitians, foot care nurses, and the list goes on,” said Michelle Stevens, executive director of Centre de Sante Communautaire de Timmins.

“We also have the community development component, which entails a lot of the fall prevention programs.”

Stevens added that programs for seniors, parents and single moms are also available.

Recruiting more staff

Two part-time physicians are on staff and Stevens said she plans to recruit two more this summer.

Access to services is granted to francophones who can’t understand English.

“So when they come in here and they could actually talk to us in French and we can have a very open and good communication in French,” said Dominique Montague, nurse practitioner at the centre.

“It really does kind of help just alleviate some of that stress, honestly, and it makes them feel really good.”

The pediatric program is offered to all children from infants to five years of age. Care is provided to English-speaking children in Francophone families.

Stevens said the vision for a francophone health centre was launched in 1988, but it wasn’t until six years ago that francophones had somewhere to go.

Services were offered at multiple locations, including one in the mall. This is the first building in which all services are offered under one roof.

“It took a village, and I’m very grateful to all the people that come together to help make this happen,” said Stevens.

“Everyone had a personal investment to have a community health centre for francophones and I truly believe that if it wasn’t for that investment and that desire to make this happen, it wouldn’t have happened.”

Club Richelieu is one group that believes in the vision. On Thursday, it donated $10,000 to the centre.

Stevens said patients who need a physician or primary health care provider would need to add their names to the province’s Health Care Connect list.

You can call the centre or visit the province’s website to do that. The province said it plans to connect every person in Ontario to primary care by 2029.