Welcome Community Home to close

Sep 14, 2019

KUALA LUMPUR: The Welcome Community Home (WCH), a hospice/care home for men living with HIV/AIDS, will close its doors on Dec 31, 2019.

This decision was made by the Board of Management which includes Archbishop Julian Leow, and was made known in a letter signed by him and Fr Bernard Hyacinth Arputhasamy, SJ, the Director of Kuala Lumpur Archdiocesan Office for Human Development, and the Manager of WCH.

The WCH has been in operation since 1998. It was meant as a transition house for men to be medicated, cared for, healed and to return to society/family in order to be productive persons. Men with HIV would stay at the home up to eight years as most who were admitted did not have any family support.

Over the years, close to 500 men who lived here in Batu Arang, Selangor, were healed before leaving the home. It was one of the first care homes to have been founded in Malaysia for those living with HIV.

Through both Catholic Welfare Services (CWS) and the Archdiocesan Office for Human Development (AOHD), the Archdiocese of Kuala Lumpur has been managing the operation on behalf of the Catholic Church in the Archdiocese. Moreover, WCH has worked with many partners, especially the Sungai Buloh Hospital, Malaysian Aids Council, Kementerian Kesihatan Malaysia, Kementerian Pembangunan Wanita, Keluarga dan Masyarakat, doctors, social workers, volunteers and many others to keep this home running in the most professional way.

Over the last four years, there have been many challenges faced by the WCH administration and staff, especially when it came to giving quality care to the residents. It has been a struggle to find proper and trained caregivers willing to work in this remote area of Batu Arang, Selangor. Its distance, almost 20 kilometres from the nearest town (Rawang), has made it difficult to hire suitable and competent people. Other challenges in managing the Home properly include hiring qualified nurses, and trained counsellors. Furthermore, it is doubtful that the Home has been actually helping the residents to be self-reliant as reflected in AOHD’s mission to “teach people how to fish” and not create dependency.

All the residents of WCH have been helped in securing jobs to be self-sufficient/self-reliant, referred to other homes, or returned to their families.