Leslie Myles | Almost Home

For 32 years Almost Home is a home-away-from-home for families whose children are receiving medical treatment in a Kingston hospital. The house has eleven guest rooms where families of children can stay for just $10 a night. Each of the rooms is different, and range in size from small one-parent rooms to large rooms that can accommodate an entire family.

Daily accommodation at Almost Home makes it easy for parents to maintain their bedside vigil. Some children can leave their hospital beds for a few hours to spend time with their families in our home-like setting. Children attending clinics have a place to go between appointments, or to stay overnight if necessary.

A child’s illness plunges parents into a strange and confusing new life of medical concerns. Repeated trips to the hospital, for days or weeks at a time, typically means one parent takes a leave from or quits their job. They worry about how the child will get over the next hurdle. Until “going home day” families have plenty of worries. The recovery of their child is foremost of course, but there’s also the strain of bedside “shifts”, finding and paying for meals in an unfamiliar city, costs for parking and gas, loss of income, exhaustion, childcare for siblings, disruption of family life, pressures on marriages, and psychological strain on siblings. Almost Home allows families to stay together during these times of stress.