Province phasing out seniors advocate role
Seniors will no longer have a dedicated provincial advocate in 2020 as government asks Alberta’s health advocate to absorb the role.
Although the minister of seniors and housing said the new combined office will still serve seniors well, the current seniors advocate worries elderly people are losing the voice of a team dedicated to combating systemic ageism.
“I am so passionate about it — we really need a seniors advocate in this province,” outgoing advocate Sheree Kwong See said earlier this month.
“We need seniors’ issues to be front and centre.”
In 2013, the former Progressive Conservative government announced it was creating offices of the health advocate and seniors advocate as part of implementing an Alberta Health Act.
The offices opened in 2014, with the health advocate taking on the seniors advocate role temporarily until Kwong See was recruited in 2016.
The seniors advocate has three key roles: helping seniors navigate systems and get support, outreach to seniors’ groups and making recommendations to government for improvements.
Since becoming independent, the office has handled about 3,600 calls for help from seniors, Kwong See said. An average case takes about six phone calls, meetings or emails to resolve. The office opens and closes about 100 cases a month.
Seniors, health advocate offices to amalgamate Dec. 24
Kwong See’s contract is set to expire at the end of 2019, and the government will not attempt to extend it. Five remaining staff and part of the seniors advocate budget will transfer to the health advocate office. That advocate reports to the health minister.
The move is expected to save $500,000 a year, “at a time when we must be mindful of every tax dollar,” said Natalie Tomczak, press secretary to Seniors and Housing Minister Josephine Pon, earlier this month.
“We are making government more efficient for seniors and their families, in keeping with our commitment to exercise fiscal discipline and to support vulnerable Albertans,” Tomczak said.
The seniors advocate’s 2018-19 annual report said 28 per cent of calls were about health care. A quarter of them were for help with income and financial supports. Another 26 per cent were looking for social supports, and 21 per cent were looking for help with housing.
“Instead of elimination, I would say (it’s) the connection of two offices to provide much better service and consolidate services because we find often that health is one of the major topics of concern for most seniors,” Pon said earlier this month. “So why don’t we just work together, the two ministries?”
Senior calls for more powers for advocate
Noel Somerville, who is pastchair of Public Interest Alberta’s seniors task force, said the government should be moving in the other direction and promoting the seniors advocate to an independent officer of the legislature.
“I think unless you appoint someone and give them a defined role that gives them some independence, then you might as well forget it, really,” Somerville, 87, said last week.
B.C.’S seniors advocate is the most effective in Canada, he said. She reports on long-term care facilities across the province, wait times for those facilities and how those times compare to provincial targets. Somerville said Alberta’s advocate should have those powers.
He questioned the qualifications of Alberta’s new health advocate in seniors’ issues. Kwong See is a University of Alberta psychology professor who studies aging.
Kwong See worries that the new advocate’s ability to track and report on systemic issues affecting seniors will be compromised when the offices are consolidated.
Based on data she collects, Kwong See made administrative and systemic recommendations to government to improve seniors’ lives, including a call for helping immigrant seniors when sponsorship arrangements break down. The health advocate doesn’t make these kinds of recommendations, she said.
Tomczak said all the seniors advocate functions will be taken over by the health advocate.