(June 21, 2016)<\/p>\n
By: Trevor Wilhelm, Windsor Star<\/p>\n
Health care advocates pushing the government to improve access and standards at long-term care homes stopped in Essex County Monday, and they brought a giant rocking chair to drive home their point.<\/p>\n
Volunteers criss-crossing Ontario with the 10-foot chair said it\u2019s a symbol of the care that residents should be receiving.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to reach into the community and actually start thinking about how we can improve standards of care and to start mobilizing a base that governments will listen to,\u201d said Windsor-Essex Health Coalition chairman Ken Lewenza Jr., who joined volunteers on the local stops. \u201cWhether you talk about it from a family\u2019s perspective or a worker\u2019s perspective, things are ready to burst. So we\u2019re saying how do we start thinking about a longer term plan and the only way we can do that is mobilize peoples\u2019 attention around this particular issue.\u201d<\/p>\n
The group made stops in Amherstburg and Essex with the chair Monday on a 19-city tour across Ontario, calling on the government to reduce wait times and set a minimum standard of care.<\/p>\n
The coalition said it wants to collect 20,000 signatures to symbolize the 20,000 people in Ontario waiting to be placed in long-term homes.<\/p>\n
Peter Boyle, a volunteer with the Ontario Health Coalition, said the minimum standard should include at least four hours of hands-on care in a 24-hour period.\u00a0This is important, he said, because of the \u201cextreme\u201d illness many patients are dealing with in long-term care homes. He said 70 per cent of the patients have some form of dementia.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe workers do everything that they can, they just don\u2019t have the time when they\u2019re serving 15, 18 patients,\u201d said Boyle. \u201cThey\u2019ve got 45 seconds here, 30 seconds there to get everyone going. They don\u2019t have any social time with them. A lot of times they over-medicate them because they don\u2019t have enough staff. They put people in diapers because they can\u2019t get them to the bathroom on time. Really it\u2019s shameful what\u2019s happening.\u201d<\/p>\n
Boyle said the coalition is also fighting for people\u2019s right of access to long-term care homes in an age of increasing wait times for a reduced number of beds.<\/p>\n
\u201cCurrently there are 80,000 long-term care beds in Ontario,\u201d said Boyle. \u201cThere is a chronic waiting list of 20,000 beds for the last 20 years. We\u2019re talking about 100,000 families that are in or trying to get into long-term care homes. The average wait time is five months.\u201d<\/p>\n
Boyle said people have a right to go into any home. If you live in Amherstburg, you have the right to go into a home in that community, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s happening is the wait times are so long that when a bed is available, you\u2019ve got to go to another community away from your family because the standard of care isn\u2019t there,\u201d said Boyle.<\/p>\n