The message bears repeating: Patients at Sunnyview Nursing and Rehabilitation Center have no need to worry.

They won’t lose their home and they will experience few changes, if any, as Butler County prepares to sell the home to a private operator.

The privatization has been a topic of discussion for the past several months, and the trend is for counties in Pennsylvania to sell retirement homes no longer considered an essential part of county government.

But news of the first concrete move toward privatization, approved last week by the county board of commissioners, threw Sunnyview’s residents into a state of tumult.

Elsewhere on this page, letter writer Stella DeLess describes a scene of shock and near-panic last week among the patients when they learned commissioners had hired a Chicago firm to market Sunnyview.

DeLess, a longtime volunteer, points out that many of those patients suffer with varying degrees of dementia. Dementia patients tend to struggle with any interruption to their daily routine, so news stories about the sale of their home was bound to upset them. Even for patients without dementia, rumors of a possible change can create anxiety.

Sunnyview patients need — and deserve — repeated assurances that the transfer of ownership won’t disrupt their lives.

Because of the nature of age-related issues, an information campaign for Sunnyview residents should be ongoing. It should have started already.

Commissioners Bill McCarrier and Dale Pinkerton, who initiated the process of selling Sunnyview, need to see personally to the startup of an information/assurance campaign. It’s in their best interest to do so.

It’s not up to the Sunnyview staff to offer assurances. Through their union, SEIU Healthcare, the staff recently rejected sweeping concessions and now face the prospect of a new, private-sector employer. The less they tell patients about Sunnyview’s status, the better for the patients and possibly themselves.

Neither is it the responsibility of Commissioner Jim Eckstein, who opposes the sale, to reassure patients of their secure future at Sunnyview. Eckstein perceives the sale — and its aftermath several years from now — as a political issue and a political opportunity. In his view, he has nothing to gain by easing the transition.

It makes sense for the county to privatize Sunnyview, and Commissioners Pinkerton and McCarrier are to be commended for pursuing it. But it is in their best interest to launch an immediate and sustained campaign of information and assurances telling residents of Sunnyview that the sale won’t cast their lives in distress.