Nova Scotia slow to provide housing, care for people with disabilities: report

Nova Scotia’s decade-long plan to move people with disabilities out of institutions and into small community homes is grinding along so slowly some parents fear they’ll die before proper care is provided, says a report examining the strategy.

The survey released on Monday by the Community Homes Action Group contains criticism of the Liberal government’s pace of change - and examples of parents’ worries.

“Our son is an only child living with aging parents and with no extended family in Nova Scotia. What will happen when we die?” said one parent quoted in the report.

“He needs .. autism appropriate housing and he deserves to have it before we die so that we can help with the transition.”

The parent adds that only a crisis would leapfrog their son to the top of a waiting list to shift into another form of care - a list the province currently estimates at 898 people.

About three quarters of the 137 people who answered the survey - including parents, caregivers, health care providers and people with disabilities - rated the pace of shifting people out of institutional-style facilities into community homes as “poor.” The survey also suggests 75 per cent of the people surveyed say there was poor progress in decreasing wait time for services, and similar levels of dissatisfaction over efforts to find work for people with disabilities.

The advocacy group said during a news conference that when the so-called roadmap was introduced by the NDP in 2013 and then accepted by the Liberal majority government, it created a sense of hope among caregivers and people with disabilities.

Three years in, the report card concluded that while there have been small signs of progress, the roadmap is becoming “a winding country lane.”

“Overall, aging parents are extremely anxious about their loved ones and they realize that being able to live in a small options home for their son and daughter is a distant dream,” said Lois Miller, a board member of the Independent Living Nova Scotia Association.

Joanne Bernard, the minister of Community Services, said in an interview she believes the Liberals will largely complete the goals of the 2013 Roadmap for Transforming the Nova Scotia Services to Persons with Disabilities Program if they’re re-elected to another majority government.