START TO FIX LONG-TERM CARE NOW

Eventually, many of us are going to need care and assistance, whether it’s help getting to the bathroom, eating or simply moving around in our day-to-day lives. In 15 years, more than 900,000 Canadians will have dementia. Many of these people — many of us — will end up in long-term-care homes. There are plenty of good reasons to improve long-term care for the elderly, but naked self-interest ought to make it a somewhat higher priority for Ontarians.

Over the past two weeks, the Citizen has been reporting on the shocking state of some municipally run long-term-care homes in Ottawa. First, the case of Jie Xiao, a personal care worker who pleaded guilty to assault for punching Georges Karam, an 89-year-old resident he was supposed to be taking care of, 11 times.

Then, two nurses were given no-trespass orders because, they said, they were advocating for better care for their loved ones. There’s no denying it is a tough business to work in: 90 per cent of residents are cognitively impaired, 40 per cent are aggressive and one-third are entirely dependent on their caregivers. But the city punished these people for speaking up on behalf of their parents.

Fixing the problems facing long-term care and patients is going to require money, no doubt … . The place to start, though, is a willingness to confront the problems in the first place.

People often end up in long-term care because their main caregiver is no longer equipped to deal with an evolving and often deteriorating situation. This is where professionals are supposed to step in. They’re trusted with the care of 114,082 vulnerable people in Ontario and some 20,000 more are on wait lists.

And while the incidents the Citizen has reported on are the exception, not the rule, in long-term-care homes, even one such case is one too many. A much larger issue is daily neglect: the elderly who fall from wheelchairs; those who are left in bed so long they develop bedsores; undignified diaper changes; lack of privacy.

That many people who have family members in care don’t speak out because they fear repercussions for their loved ones is a scandal. The use of no-trespass orders — admitted to with an insouciance by the city that takes the breath away — is an appalling use of power except in extreme cases. There must be a higher bar for this; those who blow the whistle on the state of long-term care aren’t an inconvenience to be shunted aside. Rather, the silencing of these people suggests an indifference to the state of care and an unwillingness to confront serious problems.

Fixing the problems facing long-term care and patients is going to require money, no doubt, to improve staffing, aging facilities and equipment. The place to start, though, is a willingness to confront the problems in the first place.

To do that, it means understanding that we need to want to change.

The time to get started is now.