At the Sunnycrest Nursing Home in Whitby, a provincial inspector found personal protective equipment locked up and out of reach of the health-care workers who need it. The inspector found staffing levels below 50 per cent of what’s required just to provide the most basic care.
At Tendercare Living Centre in Scarborough, family caregivers report residents banging on walls for help, pleading for food and water. Dozens of residents have died and family members have been reduced to protesting outside with “Save Our Seniors” signs.
And at St. George Care Community in Toronto, paramedics responding to a call for help found their patient naked, alone and struggling to breathe.
News of those tragedies was reported before Christmas, during the holidays, and this past week. Premier Doug Ford’s response to each one — along with pretty much all the other pandemic horror stories that have come out of Ontario’s long-term-care homes with depressing regularity — has been a variation of what he said on Friday.
“This is what what I think about constantly,” Ford said about the crisis at the St. George home. “It’s heartbreaking. It’s frustrating as well, with the long-term care homes.”
And, of course, the stock statement that would be laughable if the situation were not so tragic: “We are putting an iron ring” around long-term-care homes.
Ontario is months into the second wave and with so many long-term-care homes in crisis it’s abundantly clear the Ford government is not on top of things. It has never been ahead of the pandemic in care homes and has yet to demonstrate how it will get there.
As the proprietors of the Star, Paul Rivett and Jordan Bitove, said in an open letter on Saturday: “Enough is enough, immediate measurable action is required to save the lives of our vulnerable seniors and their caregivers.”
The Ford government cannot simply wait for vaccines to alleviate this crisis. Seniors in these homes are dying from COVID-19 too quickly for that. Some 3,000 have already died and, with more than 200 long-term-care homes in the midst of outbreaks, that tragic toll will keep rising.
If Ford and his minister of long-term care, Merrilee Fullerton, don’t know what to do, which heaven’s knows shouldn’t be the case given how many health-care experts, advocates and reports they have to draw on, they need look no further than the Star’s open letter.
It calls on the government to commit to vaccinating all long-term-care residents, staff and caregivers by Feb. 15.
Ontario made a mistake by not immediately starting to vaccinate residents in care homes (rather than just workers and caregivers), as Quebec did, and now there’s no time to lose in reaching those most vulnerable Ontarians.
The letter calls on Ontario and Ottawa each to provide $100 million in emergency funds to hire additional long-term care staff and increase their wages. Without more staff and improved working conditions there will never be any hope for residents to experience the caring and dignified final years they deserve.
The letter calls for mandatory weekly inspections of long-term-care facilities and a rapid response task force of specialized health-care workers to respond to emergencies in homes. With those pieces in place homes could be identified and helped before they turn into a Sunnycrest, Tendercare, St. George…
And it calls for dedicated provincial and federal ombuds to review all complaints from residents, their families and staff and to oversee strict new long-term-care standards that will ensure humane care for residents.
If those actions were implemented, our elders would receive better and more dignified care. Inspectors would quickly catch problems in home and an expert team could swoop in to fix them. And families would have a dedicated ombud to contact for help and to hold homes to account instead of standing on the lawns with placards in fury and frustration.
None of that should be too much to ask. Indeed, it should be what’s expected.
https://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/2021/01/11/a-blueprint-for-action-on-long-term-care.html
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