Expand the long-term care inquiry fast
Our elderly deserve to live with dignity now, not after yet another study
A London nursing home was ordered to stop admitting new patients for violations including elder abuse.
Long-term care facilities in Mississauga and Wellington County received similar orders.
In Ottawa, a long-term care resident’s daughter recorded video of a support worker asking an elderly, disabled resident: “Why is it taking you so long to die?”
There is a crisis in our long-term care system.
The Ministry of Health recently announced an official public inquiry into the tragic situation that allowed Elizabeth Wettlaufer to continue working in Ontario’s nursing homes even after she was fired.
Ontario Court of Appeal Justice Eileen Gillese has been appointed to examine the conditions that allowed eight residents to be murdered.
It is unfortunate that it has taken this tragedy to motivate the government into reviewing long-term care.
Violence, abuse, insufficient funding and staffing shortages in nursing homes have long been evident and the Wettlaufer incident, tragically, is only a symptom of the larger issues facing long-term care.
CLAC and many other unions and advocacy groups have been talking to the ministry about this for many years.
The crisis in the long-term care system is not the lack of knowledge of the issues, it is a lack of will to do anything about it.
The response from the government has usually been additional regulation and continued inadequate funding for care.
We urge the government to give this inquiry a mandate to delve into all issues surrounding the safety and care of residents in long-term care. CLAC is concerned that a two-year delay will be used as an excuse to defer action beyond the final report. For too many, this will result in changes that are just too little too late.
One facility worked 700 shifts short last year. That means staff were not available to help elderly patients in their care to go to the bathroom, have their medication administered or meals delivered on time. In other words, their very basic human needs were unmet.
This complete lack of dignity isn’t just terrible for our elders in care, it makes for a toxic work environment. Imagine knowing you were going to work a shift that is short five people. No personal support worker can pick up that much slack.
Ontario currently funds nursing homes at levels that are 18 per cent less than the national average, coming in second from the bottom among the provinces.
The need for additional hours of care has been repeatedly documented and the Ontario Long-Term Care Association has been calling for more funding, but little action has been taken to date.
We need the government to make interim funding adjustments to front-line staffing where it is now desperately needed.
NDP Leader Andrea Horwath has raised these recent incidences of elder abuse in the legislature, calling on the Ontario government to expand its inquiry into the murders of long-term care residents by Elizabeth Wettlaufer.
“Every day I hear from family members who tell me about the horrific conditions their loved ones face in care.
“The issues in long-term care are systemic — they stretch to every corner of this province.”
We agree with this push for a broadened mandate, but doing so without also taking immediate action is a failure.
The government can start closing the 18 per cent gap while the inquiry is underway by immediately increasing the nursing and personal care envelope by two per cent on top of the inflationary increase, for a total of four per cent each year.
Our elderly parents and grandparents deserve to live with dignity now, not after another study has been completed.