Social Policy in Ontario

Home care gets $100-million boost from province

Posted on July 20, 2016 in Child & Family Delivery System

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TheStar.com – News/Queen’s Park – Extra funding will go to help family caregivers, who often burn out while taking care of loved ones.
July 19, 2016.   By ROB FERGUSON, Queen’s Park Bureau

Ontarians who take care of chronically ill loved ones at home — and often feel burned out — are getting more help from the province as part of a $100-million cash infusion for the home-care system this year.

“We know they deliver the lion’s share of support to family members and loved ones,” Health Minister Eric Hoskins said Tuesday at a downtown apartment building with assisted living services.

The $20 million set aside to boost respite care will provide a “much-needed break for caregivers who give so much of themselves to provide daily, around-the-clock care” with 600,000 additional hours of assistance, he added.

Home-care services will get the remaining $80 million, providing another 350,000 hours of nursing care and 1.3 million more hours of personal support for services like dressing, bathing, grooming and homemaking.

The government has been widely criticized by opposition parties for home-care waits, with the New Democrats proposing a five-day guarantee in the 2014 election campaign.

Industry groups applauded the improvements, particularly in respite care given that surveys show caregiver burnout rates have doubled in the past few years.

“The caregivers themselves can fall ill and end up in the emergency room,” said Lisa Levin, chair of the Ontario Caregiver Coalition. “You hear stories about people dropping off their loved ones at the ER, saying ‘I can’t deal with this anymore.’ ”

Given that the province spends $3 billion a year on home care to keep people out of more-expensive care in hospitals and nursing homes, the additional $100 million is “substantial,” said Susan VanderBent, chief executive of Home Care Ontario.

“Hopefully, it gets right to the front line.”

Hoskins said families needing respite care or more home care will have to apply to their local Community Care Access Centre, which will assess needs.

Some of the new money is intended to help patients with the highest needs for home care get more support.

With respite care, personal support workers can be sent to a patient’s home for a few hours or a day, or patients can be placed in nursing homes for up to 90 days a year if beds are available, with an additional fee.

About 60 per cent of the 650,000 Ontarians who receive home care are seniors. Many require assistance to stay in their homes, or recuperate after being discharged from hospital, with nursing visits and bandage changes.

Hoskins said the government is also setting up a panel of experts to examine the levels of home care provided in different parts of Ontario to ensure “consistency” — something Ontario’s auditor general has raised concerns about.

The aim is make sure patients and their families “can understand, based on an assessment of the needs of the client, exactly the services they would be entitled to and how to go about getting those services,” added the minister, a family doctor.

< https://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2016/07/19/home-care-gets-100-million-boost-from-province.html >

Tags: budget, disabilities, Health, mental Health, standard of living

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