Friday came and went at the Durango Health and Rehabilitation Center – but Amy Eckhart and her early child care business The Growing Place stayed.
The Center, which The Ensign Group acquired in September, had previously notified Eckhart her lease would expire last week. She said the notice shook her and the parents of the toddler-age children she cares for.
Eckhart said she was sent scrambling to identify a suitable place to move to, and her clients likewise rushed to find other child care providers. In interviews, some parents said they or their partners were considering quitting their jobs to care for their children. Four families dropped out of Eckhart’s program.
But on Dec. 3, Eckhart said she and Delaney Mott, director of the Durango Health and Rehabilitation Center – formerly named the Junction Creek Health and Rehabilitation Center – had reached an agreement to extend her lease after meeting in person for the first time.
The Growing Place’s lease was extended to June 30, giving Eckhart a little more than six months to find a new location.
Mott said when she and Eckhart met earlier this month, they planned for a 15-minute conversation. But they ended up talking for several hours.
“This sheds light on a bigger issue, like this problem doesn’t begin nor end with this space,” Mott said to Eckhart on Friday. “You provide amazing care to amazing, cute little kids, but that’s, you know, a drop in the bucket as far as the care that we need in this community for children. And I think it brings to light the issue of the lack of resources and the lack of child care available in La Plata County.”
Eckhart said she is still “crushed” The Growing Place’s time at the Center is ticking down, although she’s grateful for her lease extension.
“It’s 1,000 square feet with a beautiful yard for these kids. I have to plead my case,” she said.
She asked why the urgency – in the years The Growing Place has been at the Center, the Center has never had full occupancy.
Mott said the Center is planning for full occupancy in six months’ time and some space is currently empty because the rooms are being painted.
The Growing Place’s space will be used for certified nursing assistant training, Katie Evans, registered nurse and staff development coordinator, said. She said there’s a large need but limited schooling for CNAs in Durango. A training program would allow the Center to develop its own CNAs.
Additionally, the Center employs residents of Utah, Arizona and New Mexico, she said. When the space isn’t used for training, it could accommodate employees with long commutes with a place to rest.
Mott said Eckhart’s and her clients’ impression Ensign swooped into Durango and gave The Growing Place the boot with no understanding of the community or its needs is incorrect.
“When we bought the building, we sat down as a management team and talked about the decision if we wanted to continue the lease or not, and the management team, 20 of them, all of (whom) have lived here for many, many, many years, decided that we could utilize the space in a better way to serve our resident population,” she said.
She said it’s also false that the Center brings sex offenders under its care, contrary to what Eckhart and some of her parents were told by an Ensign representative – that children cannot be allowed on the site because then the Center could not accept registered sex offenders into its care.
“We are a family-oriented company, like we have a lot of people who are either single parents or their kids’ school gets out at two, and they don’t get off until six,” she said. “I’ve always allowed children to be inside the facility and for them to bring their kids to work, so we would never have sex offenders inside the building.”
The Center provides short- and long-term care to the elderly. Its memory care unit, which works with people with dementia, has only 12 beds, all of which are full, and a long waiting list. She said she isn’t sure where the next closest facility with a memory care unit is.
The Center accepts hospital patients for short-term (two weeks to 30 days) rehabilitative care, but the need for long-term care in Durango is great as well, she said. It’s not uncommon for a patient to be admitted for short-term rehab only for their children to later say they are unable to care for them anymore.
“They’ll have multiple falls or not (be) able to cook or clean for themselves, and then they’ll end up staying with us for long-term care,” she said.
Mott and Eckhart agreed they are in very similar lines of work at the opposite ends of the age spectrum, and the needs for early child care and elderly care are great.
In the United States, nursing homes and elderly care have a negative reputation, Mott said, and “that’s why we are working so hard to change that stigma and make it a place that’s open to the community.”
cburney@durangoherald.com
An earlier version of this story erred in saying The Growing Place’s lease was extended to June 31. The month of June, of course, has only 30 days.
