Listen up – there is very little – if any – publicly funded home care available in Ontario.
I don’t know how much clearer we can be.
We are mad as hell. We all should be. The Ontario Government has been encouraging us all to “age in place” because fixing our Long Term Care (“LTC”) system is too expensive.
We understand, if given the choice, most people would love to be able minded and able bodied enough to actually stay at home. HOWEVER, what happens when the unthinkable happens, when you just can’t – you can’t manage the house, the stairs, the cooking, the shopping, the yard work, paying bills….what happens when you are confined to a wheelchair, or have cognitive challenges…what happens when you can no longer be the sole caretaker for your spouse? What happens then? Will the government step in and help? Hell no.
The number of people requiring chronic care is growing. But no one is telling us what service cuts are coming, and trust us, they are coming.
Just ten years ago, people could get up to 4 or 5 hours of subsidized home care a day. That kind of service would allow seniors to age in place. Unbelievably, they could also get medical equipment dropped off for as long as they needed it.
When we first started Discerning Seniors one of our clients required a mechanical lift to help her move from her hospital bed to her wheelchair – both the bed and the wheelchair were covered by OHIP. On the day she was discharged from the hospital, the non-urgent ambulance (also covered by OHIP) transported her to the family’s chosen retirement home. Her government case manager met us there! The case manager also oversaw the delivery of the mechanical lift and wheelchair to her privately funded suite.
Despite no announcements that these OHIP covered services have stopped – they have stopped. How do we know? Because today we have a client who requires similar supportive services and equipment. She has to pay for all of it – with zero help from anyone. We received a list from the hospital of what was needed and that was it. No one seemed to care where she might be going next – and if truly unable to go home, and not able to pay for private care, the hospital could have shipped her to ANY publicly funded Long Term Care Home within 70 km from her family. 70! It takes an average of 45 minutes to drive 10 km in this city as it is. And trust us, the homes that have rooms available….are not where you want to be.
She may receive a modicum of publicly funded care – but the family will not know how much until she is discharged from Humber. The newly rebranded and reduced LHIN is now ironically called Ontario Health at Home (“OHAH”). The family must organize private care to support her needs until OHAH lets them know how much support can be provided. But no one is under the illusion the care offered will be nearly enough.
For the record, private care through an agency, costs an average of $40/hour – that quickly adds up to $960 per day. We repeat, $960 per day.
Most people cannot afford that for a long time. How do families manage?
Families create a patchwork of care for their loved ones using a combination of
- taking what they can from the system (by the way, the rumour is that they will be phasing out any publicly funded care for anyone living above the poverty line)
- doing it themselves (mostly daughters, who likely have full time jobs and kids to raise)
- find someone privately (a non-agency PSW) (but how do you know who to trust?)
Trust us we’ve heard a thousand stories about a friend’s old nanny who can put in a couple of hours, or a trusted cleaning lady keeping an eye on Mom. Just for the record PSW work is very different from “keeping an eye on someone”. Elderly people’s care needs are complex.
All this adds up to a lot of work, maybe even a 3rd job for the working mom who probably manages most of the home “stuff”.
This is the new reality. People are living longer with physical challenges, managed diseases, limited mobility and incontinence. And it’s wonderful to have our folks with us for longer, it really is. It’s also expensive.
The public healthcare system does not fund chronic care needs. There is no safety net. And if a government can quietly pass a draconian Bill like C7 (the Bill that allows hospitals to ship people off to Long Term Care homes far away from their families) without losing any sleep, what else are they willing to do?
DEMAND BETTER
