They shouldn’t be surprised by LTC horrors
The Canadian Forces report on the appalling conditions in five Ontario long-term care homes hit by COVID -19 has been met with expressions of shock and horror from the provincial government. But none of this should come as a surprise.
The report makes disturbing reading, but no one in government should pretend they didn’t see this coming. Not if they’ve been paying any attention to what families have been saying over the years, and what numerous reports have documented.
The tale of abuse and neglect told by the military has been the sad history of long-term care in Ontario that both Liberal and Conservative governments have ignored for years. It took the military all of 30 days to uncover the horrific conditions, but Ontario governments had decades and chose to see nothing.
Premier Doug Ford is right to say he inherited a broken system, but equally true is that he did nothing to make it better. There is blame to go all around on this systemic failure, but now maybe, just maybe, the government will be shamed into real, meaningful action.
The truth about this situation is that long-term care has just never been a priority for any Ontario government. When early on the pandemic took 54 lives at two seniors homes in the GTA, LongTerm Care Minister Merrilee Fullerton rejected calls to take over the homes, saying her ministry doesn’t run homes. Barely a week later, Ford called in the military. A CBC investigation found that the Ford government drastically reduced inspections done in homes, with only nine out of 626 homes inspected last year, which raises the question: how can you find abuses if you don’t conduct thorough inspections?
Ford says the buck stops with him. Let’s see if he comes up with actual solutions, concrete plans to assure Ontarians he gets it. The premier may have no choice now but to order a public inquiry, but for the time being, he has to give people who have loved ones in these homes some comfort things will change. Ford has asked for an extension of the military mission, but what happens when the soldiers leave? Can the premier trust the very managers who presided over this disaster to continue running the homes? Will people who have family members in these homes trust them? It’s good, at least, that Ford has decided the province will take over management of the troubled homes.
One of the first things to try to understand, however, is the culture at long-term homes that allows the kind of abuse detailed by the military. Why would staff leave seniors in soiled diapers? Why would they use the same syringes multiple times?
Why would they administer expired medication? Why would people be left hungry? One woman said she got a call from her father at one of the homes complaining of hunger. He wasn’t being fed. And why would there be a “culture of fear” over using supplies? All of these things seem like basic elements of care anyone would expect, so what went wrong? Who are the managers or supervisors in these homes, and what were they doing in those critical moments? These and many other questions need to be addressed to get us anywhere forward.
Quite often when something goes spectacularly wrong, such as this long-term care calamity, the easy solution is to throw more money at it. Already, the federal government is being urged to step in with more funding, of course, and Ford himself has said the province cannot deal with the crisis alone. Adequate funding is no doubt critical. However, long-term care is a provincial responsibility and it’s doubtful when the dust settles that Ontario, or any other province, would take direction from the federal government on the issue.
The crisis has hit such a raw nerve that there may not be a better time to deal with it. But before we talk money, let us first understand what the underlying problems really are. Let’s not build a new edifice on the same shaky foundation.
Mohammed Adam is an Ottawa writer.