Ronald McDonald House family room coming to Royal Inland Hospital in 2024

KAMLOOPS – Families with sick or injured children from out of town can breathe a little easier – with plans underway to bring a Ronald McDonald House space to Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops.

Ronald McDonald House BC and Yukon, alongside the Royal Inland Hospital Foundation and Interior Health announced today that a family room will be added to the hospital during Phase Two of the Patient Care Tower project.

Local committee co-chair Sarah Irvine says the room will be a no-cost place for families to sleep, cook and spend time with their kids. All designed to be a break from hospital settings.

“If you’re from anywhere surrounding Kamloops, that’s a tough thing to have to think about – accommodations. You can just come to the hospital, you can have a non-clinical setting while your child is being treated. You can be steps away, or you can take a break, and be able to relax and recharge, which is so important in the healing process.”

Irvine says she wanted to become more involved in bringing such a place to Kamloops, after seeing the benefits of a Ronald McDonald House facility in person. When her niece needs to go to Vancouver for treatments or appointments, Irvine says the support offered through the family spaces is crucial for making sure the hospital stay doesn’t have a constant clinical feeling to it.

The existing Ronald McDonald House facility in Vancouver serves approximately 2,000 families per year, with about one-third of those coming from the Kamloops area. The new family room in Kamloops will be the second one in British Columbia, and RIH Foundation CEO Heidi Coleman says it will aim to provide similar out of town family support.

“When you talk about Vancouver, everybody in the Ronald McDonald House in Vancouver is not from Vancouver obviously, so they can stay home. So it’s always Kamloops and other areas there and that’s why we need to support the Vancouver home as well,” she explains. “And then this home, it makes sense because we have people so far away. From Williams Lake, Ashcroft, Chase – even someone I know in Sun Peaks had their baby born here too early, and they had no place to stay because they’re in Sun Peaks.”

Al Gozda, McDonald’s local franchisee and former hospital foundation board member, says the need for out-of-town family support from RIH is larger than most people would think.

“We look at ourselves as a small city, small hospital, but when you look at the whole catchment area, our NICU (neonatal intensive care unit) is really busy. I just found out talking to some people here that when it’s full, we actually airlift kids to other hospitals. So stuff like this – it’s clearly needed.”

A portion of the money used to keep supporting families comes from the annual McHappy Day donations and fundraising for Ronald McDonald House Charities. When asked whether the family room at RIH will change the energy of upcoming McHappy Days in Kamloops, Gozda says the local aspect could make for a slightly different feel to the campaign.

“It won’t, and it will. It won’t because it’s still supporting the Ronald McDonald House but now, funds are all going to be directed right into Kamloops to help support the house here.”

Soon, a campaign for operational costs will be starting up through a special fund with the Royal Inland Hospital Foundation.

It’s not know what the exact operating costs will be for the family room once it’s built, but Ronald McDonald House BC and Yukon CEO Richard Pass says typically, the rooms need between $100,000, and $150,000 a year to run.

According to Pass, the family room is still in the planning stage to determine what the needs in Kamloops are, but there is a general format to the rooms.

“Typically, there are a number of sleeping rooms, and then common space that will provide services for families – kitchens, play areas, that kind of stuff. And what we don’t know yet is really how many sleep rooms (we’ll need).”

The family room is projected to open in 2024, depending on construction timelines with Phase One and Two of the Patient Care Tower.