Failing Our Elders

 

Wednesday, April 28, 2021

Neglecting Our Elders

 

Andre Picard is a writer with the Globe and Mail newspapers who has penned a number of thoughtful and pointed columns on the response by governments to COVID-19 during the past 13 months.He has been direct and at times scathing about the failure to address the safety and care of seniors in those first months leading to a shocking loss of life amongst our most vulnerable. He was written a book called Neglected No More:The Urgent Need to Improve the Lives of Canada's Elders in the Wake of a Pandemic. The publisher's description offers: 

It took the coronavirus pandemic to open our eyes to the deplorable state of so many of the nation's long-term care homes: the inhumane conditions, overworked and underpaid staff, and lack of oversight. In this timely new book, esteemed health reporter André Picard reveals the full extent of the crisis in eldercare, and offers an urgently needed prescription to fix a broken system...

In Neglected No More, André Picard takes a hard look at how we came to embrace mass institutionalization, and lays out what can and must be done to improve the state of care for our elders, a highly vulnerable population with complex needs and little ability to advocate for themselves.

Picard shows that the entire eldercare system--fragmented, underfunded and unsupported--is long overdue for a fundamental rethink. We need to find ways to ensure seniors can age gracefully in the community for longer, with supportive home care and respite for family caregivers, and ensure that long-term care homes are not warehouses of isolation and neglect. Our elders deserve nothing less.

                                                    Nursing home visit through a window during pandemic 

As a pastor I've spent a lot of time in long-term care and assisted living facilities, the good, the bad and the ugly. Some of the best environments for residents were small, privately run homes which eventually closed by regulations designed for larger institutions. 

Both of my parents were in nursing homes at the time of their deaths and we were grateful for the excellent staff in their respective nursing homes. Yet my mother lived for a time in an assisted living facility which was expensive, didn't deliver on care, and had a revolving door for managers. She died with dementia in late 2018, and we're relieved that she didn't spend her last days in isolation as so many have during the pandemic, and that we were with her at the end. We shudder at what residents and families have gone through. 

Yesterday Ontario's auditor general, Bonnie Lysak, issued a report saying that the  long-term care sector and the ministry that oversees it were not "prepared or equipped" to handle the litany of issues brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.  This corroborates the assessment by Picard of the failure of eldecare in this wealthy nation. And of course the Ford government refuses to accept any responsibility for what has transpired. 

Do we value our elders? Do we honour our mothers and fathers, as one of the Ten Commandments directs us to do? The crisis of COVID shows us that we don't and we haven't. I hope that we have the will and the moral fortitude to do better. 

                                                        Ontario Auditor General Bonnie Lysak