State frail care centres shut door on new patients

State frail care services for new patients have collapsed in the province following an agreement between the social development department and Eastern Cape Frail Care that there will be no further admissions to the only two state centres in the province.

Plans to establish a new frail care centre according to a plan drawn up by former social development MEC Nancy Sihlwayi have also been brushed aside, with the department now saying it does not believe it has a legal mandate to provide frail care and can only establish “old age homes”.

Spokesperson Mzukisi Solani said the department was adhering to two court orders handed down by the Port Elizabeth High Court in 2016 and 2017 to keep the two facilities – one in Bethelsdorp and the other in Lorraine – open.

However, in line with their present understanding of the matter, no new patients would be admitted.

“The department has no mandate to establish ‘frail care centres’. The Older Persons Act No 13 of 2006, Chapter 3, refers to residential facilities that [are] old age homes, but not ‘frail care centres’.”

He said social development believed the responsibility should be shared with the department of health.

The existing situation means many patients needing state frail care have nowhere to go as dwindling subsidies make it impossible for nongovernment organisations (NGOs) to see to patients needing specialist care without charging more.

Maureen Andreka, head of the Algoa Bay Council for the Aged – a nonprofit organisation (NPO) – confirmed that state social workers were refusing to screen people for frail care, leaving many old age homes to try to care for patients themselves.

“The community should know that old age homes are doing their best and that there is no state frail care available for new patients,” she said.

The department first indicated its plans to move away from specialist frail care to integrating patients into old age homes in 2016, after the Port Elizabeth High Court barred it from closing down the only two frail care centres in the province.

Solani said the decision was the result of consensus reached between the department and the company running the two frail care facilities, Eastern Cape Frail Care – which is part of Life Esidimeni – that there would be no new admissions.

He said there were now 199 patients at the two centres.

When the decision was originally taken to close the frail care centres, there were 240 patients.

The department was not allowed to “migrate beneficiavised

Bobby Stevenson

ries” in and out of the centres unless agreed to by a curator.

“The intake of new patients into the Algoa [Bethelsdorp] and Lorraine facilities is managed through a curator as provided for in the court order,” Solani said.

But the curator appointed by the court, advocate Sarah Sephton, said she had not received a single request from the department relating to the admission of patients.

Solani said: “As a law-abiding institution, the department operates according to the dictates of the court order.”

Life Esidimeni managing director Puseletso Jaure said they had been told by the department that it could not afford to pay for any new patients.

“The Eastern Cape department of social development has agreed on a tariff for the care of existing residents of Eastern Cape Frail Care and ad- that the department is not in a financial position to admit new residents,” Jaure said.

Solani said old age home subsidies were increased by R300 from R1,700 in the 2016/2017 financial year, to R2,000 in 2018/2019.

Several NGOs providing care for older people, but not frail care, had refused to take frail patients, saying it was too expensive to care for them due to the limited subsidies offered by the department.

But Solani said the department believed this was a choice being made rather than out of desperation.

“The department does not have information of any people directly dying from home because of not accessing the frail care services,” he said.

“Instead, what we have noticed is that the number of older persons receiving support through NPOs is declining because of older persons preferring home-based care or community-based care services.”

According to a tender awarded to Life Esidimeni, which is under investigation by the Special Investigations Unit, social development pays about R19,000 per frail care patient a month.

Jolene Dolley has been struggling to get her 96-yearold grandfather, Johannes Ruiters Sauls, who had surgery in June, into frail care.

“He is not being well looked after where he is in an old age home,” she said.

“I want to do better for him. “I phoned everywhere. “He cannot afford private frail care. He is only getting a state pension.

“The government’s frail care said they are not taking any new people.

“We don’t know where to turn,” Dolley said.

The DA’s Bobby Stevenson said no caring government could simply abandon the most helpless members of society to die on the streets.

“It will create a crisis of mammoth proportions.

“The province must come up with an alternative plan.”

Portfolio committee for social development chair Christian Martin said they had not been informed of any policy change by the department.

‘It will create a crisis of mammoth proportions. The province must come up with an alternative plan’