A look behind the scenes of a nursing home without walls
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Sheila Moore hasn’t spent much time thinking about where she’ll live when she grows up. But she knew one thing for sure.
“If I have to go to a nursing home, that’s fine, but I would prefer not to do that.”
The 82-year-old woman’s home in Fredericton is filled with paintings, art and photographs of her children, grandchildren and her late husband.
“You don’t know what it’s like to leave your home. It feels good to be in your own home with your things.”
She plans to stay in it as long as possible. In 2025, she signed up for the Nursing Home Without Walls program, where she was assigned a wellness coordinator to spend two to three hours every few weeks checking in.
“I feel like he’s like one of my family, and he always helps me and he brightens my day.”
Right now, Moore and Wellness Coordinator Emmett Legare are working together to build a dollhouse.
For seniors like Sheila Moore, the Nursing Home Without Walls program offers the option to stay in a familiar place. For the province, this could be a long-term solution to an overloaded long-term care system
“You get to help them with things that maybe they can’t do on their own, or maybe they don’t have family that’s able to do those kinds of things,” Legare said. “So it really feels like you’re traveling with a friend or family member.”
Nursing Home Without Walls provides free emotional and social care to clients. Each program operates out of an existing nursing home.
In addition to one-on-one visits, York Care Center’s program offers activities open to the community. It also offers educational sessions for clients on a monthly basis on various topics, such as fraud prevention or how to navigate the health care system.
Additionally, the program provides an accessible bathing service, food bank access, and caregiver support through the assisted living complex.
In 2019, Suzanne Dupuis-Blanchard started Nursing Home Without Walls in New Brunswick. Since then, 36 nursing homes have signed up, according to the Department of Social Development, and as a result 5,200 senior citizens have received care.
provincial government recently announced it will spend $4 million to expand Nursing Homes Without Walls as part of its long-term care strategy. It’s part of an effort to strengthen community supports and services to help seniors stay in place.
Dupuis-Blanchard says she saw a gap in long-term care assistance, which inspired her to start the program seven years ago.
“A big component of aging is social isolation and loneliness,” Dupuis-Blanchard said.
“Everyone wants to grow old in their own place, but not when you’re socially isolated or feeling lonely. That’s a big component of a nursing home without walls.”
He said the consequences of spending on the program will be long-term and could mean older adults will age in their own homes and receive social care and guidance to navigate the health care system.
“We are considering preventing or delaying admission to long-term care. For example, we are considering the need to go to the emergency department for a non-urgent, non-related, medical problem.”
Candace Purcell, manager of the program offered by York Care Home, says that Nursing Home Without Walls is not a direct alternative to a nursing home, but is instead intended to lighten the burden on an overloaded health care system.
“There certainly comes a point when a person is no longer safe, even with all the support in the world. It’s important to recognize that we’re not trying to eliminate nursing home beds. We’re trying to eliminate premature admissions.”
Now six provinces are following New Brunswick and planning to run nursing homes without walls in their communities. The national expansion is expected to begin by March 2028, Dupuis-Blanchard said.
At Moore’s house, she and Emmett are hard at work on the dollhouse on her dining room table.
“I’m blind in one eye, so I couldn’t do this alone. But I want to be able to do that, and look at my own photos and use my sewing machine, make a quilt. And it’s great to be in my own home with my own things.”
