The last organization providing day care services for aging adults in Hancock County has raised enough money for a down payment to keep its home, despite millions of dollars in state liens filed against the former agency that owns the building.
Friendship Cottage in Blue Hill, which opened in 2008, formerly operated under the community action agency Downeast Community Partners, which collapsed this fall and is now liquidating its assets. DCP owes more than $4 million to the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, which put liens on its properties last year.
Donors have been working to raise $750,000 to buy the Friendship Cottage building back before the liquidation process puts it on the market in March. At the same time, Community Action in Aroostook, Washington and Hancock Counties – the new community action agency that now operates in DCP’s place – is trying to increase enrollment so the cottage can stay open long term.
About $282,000 has been raised for the building purchase as of Tuesday morning, enough for a down payment, director Anne Ossanna said.
The program risks having to close at a time when health care services and resources for aging people have shuttered across the region in recent years, leaving Friendship Cottage as the last place in Hancock County able to provide nursing home level care, according to Ossanna.
“It’s just horrible, because we’re an aging county,” she said of the remaining resources.
The center got its start in 2006, when people working in health care and local nonprofits came together to talk about what the Blue Hill peninsula needed. Donors raised $1.4 million to purchase and renovate the building on Ellsworth Road.
Since then, the county has lost its last skilled nursing facility when the Island Nursing Home in Deer Isle closed in 2021. Another adult day care center in Ellsworth shuttered last year after a fire.
Providers around the county have said such closures have resulted in people keeping their loved ones at home for longer instead of sending them to Bangor, Washington County or even southern Maine for advanced residential care.
Beginning during the pandemic, Friendship Cottage started to see an increase in people at its program who need nursing level care – sometimes staying longer than they probably should, according to Ossanna. While the cottage can provide that care, it’s a big challenge for family members at home the rest of the time.
“Right now a third of our clients are nursing home level of care, and that is a lot of work,” Ossanna said.
At the same time, the program needs more clients in order to break even financially, according to Jason Parent, CEO of the Aroostook action agency that is expanding Downeast to take up the services DCP offered.
Past recordkeeping under DCP made it hard to know how much money the program was losing, he said, but it now appears to be in the red by around $6,000 to $8,000 each month due to under-enrollment.
When the state filed liens against the former agency, DHHS spokesperson Lindsay Hammes said that if taxpayer funds are provided for contracted services, the vendor has to provide evidence it delivered those services and used funds for their intended purpose.
The agency was far behind on its financial audits, according to Ossanna.
The new agency has dedicated federal block grant funding to Friendship Cottage through September while it looks to bolster participation, Parent said. Block grants are a major source of funding for community action agencies, which are regional organizations that aim to relieve the effects of poverty through a range of programs spanning early childhood education to transportation to heating assistance distribution.
Friendship Cottage is expected to break even if it goes up from the nine people currently enrolled to 12.
Decisions about the program’s future won’t be made until the new board is formed with representatives from Hancock County, Parent said.
He’s optimistic that once the building’s future is secured and the services have been promoted, it will fill up. If enrollment doesn’t increase, local donors have said they may be interested in making up the shortfall, he said.
The new agency will own the building if the purchase is successful, he said, with a covenant added to the purchase agreement to keep it available for services on the peninsula. That aims to avoid donors having to fundraise for the building a third time in the future.
There’s a clear need for the services, he said, and he praised the staff who provide it.
“We are committed to this program and turning it around,” he said.