5/2/2012 - Barron Center Celebrates 30 Years
City hopes community will join in the celebration by volunteering their time

PORTLAND, Maine – This month the City of Portland’s Barron Center, a long term nursing care center operated by the Department of Health and Human Services, celebrates its thirtieth anniversary since officially opening its doors in May 1982. As a part of the celebration, the center is seeking volunteers from the public to spend time with one of the more than two hundred residents at the center. Volunteers interested in teaching a class from a variety of topics including crafts, gardening, and music or wanting to spend a few hours a week enjoying the company or making friends with the residents are encouraged to contact Tonya Heskett, Director of Recreation and Volunteers at (207)541-6557. These opportunities offer something both for the volunteers and the residents, whose daily lives are brightened by the time spent with caring and dependable adults. Volunteer schedules are flexible.

“For three decades, the city’s Barron Center has provided compassionate care to thousands of residents,” stated City of Portland Mayor Michael Brennan. “This mission honors a tradition started more than two centuries ago to care for the community’s vulnerable. A fitting anniversary gift from the community would be to honor this tradition and spend some time getting to know one of the center’s residents.”

Even at its inception more than two centuries ago, volunteers played a critical role in meeting the needs of these vulnerable populations. The Barron Center’s origins date back to the early 1800’s when the city established an Almshouse on Portland Street for the care of the poor, elderly and mentally ill. The Almshouse sat on more than one hundred acres of donated land used for farming and livestock to support the residents of the Almshouse. In addition to providing care to the poor and elderly, the Almshouse was also a correctional facility. In the 1870’s, the city added the Greely Hospital, which was among other things used to respond to smallpox and ship fever (typhus) epidemics.

While the conditions during the 1800’s were not ideal and reflect attitudes of the time, at the turn of the century operations began to change with a new structure and effort to improve the lives of those who sought care or lived at the Farrington Hospital and Boothby Home. The two facilities provided medical, surgical and pediatric services as well as residence to many of the city’s vulnerable. Later named the Portland City Hospital, the mission of the institution began to evolve and focus on extended and acute care for the elderly in the 1960’s.

Twenty years later, the city opened the Barron Center named after Mathew and Evelyn Barron, who together devoted sixty years of service to the city hospital. The center located on Brighton Avenue provides high quality skilled rehabilitation services and care for elderly and disabled individuals, nursing care, adult day care and short term respite care to hundreds of people every year. The 219-bed skilled and long term nursing care center provides compassionate and individualized care and keeps a more than two hundred year commitment of the community to care and treat its citizens in need with dignity and respect.

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