The care of our senior citizens has undergone change with significant consequences in the last few generations.
Social values have switched from the extended family where grandparents lived with several generations of the family, creating a social unit that allowed the elderly to act as buffers between parents and children, to offer the wisdom of their years of experience, and act as babysitters.
From that social model, we have evolved to the out of sight, out of mind warehousing model that places seniors in homes dedicated to their care and leaves the rest of the family to their own devices.
Supposedly, the radical switch was the result of privacy wants and needs by the younger generation and a mobile work force.
More likely, the cause was general affluence of society and the desire to get rid of anything like seniors’ care at home that cramps lifestyle and the two-family income stream.
The government funding shift from public homes to for-profit didn’t help care.
The COVID-19 pandemic has shown the warehousing care has some glaring gaps for this older generation.
Our seniors’ population may as well be acting in a Rodney Dangerfield — I don’t get no respect — movie.
Once in a care home, many seniors are warehoused and never seen or heard from other than by those relatives choosing to visit. Being lonely isn’t the only hardship seniors suffer in some care homes.
The pandemic experience illustrates how badly society treats seniors stuck in these warehouses.
From underpaid employees to health care standards, seniors are at greater risk of deadly health issues.
A special kind of person with patience and loving attitude is needed to care for other people. The reward has been minimum wage and cutbacks on hours to save on paying benefits.
Reduced hours have forced employees to work at multiple seniors’ care homes, ensuring rapid spread of disease.
The consequence of this practice sees four out of every five COVID-19 deaths being among seniors in care homes.
The reluctance of minimum wage employees to take further pandemic risks by staying home placed more work on those still working.
The concept of shared bathrooms and even shared rooms in care homes in some provinces added fuel to the infection.
Moose Jaw’s St. Anthony’s Home had some shared bathrooms until the 1990s when it was closed and Providence Place opened
As a private seniors’ boarding home, the former St. Anthony’s Home continued to rent rooms with shared bathrooms until the owner realized no one wanted to rent them and renovated the place.
Adding to woes in the out of sight, out of mind seniors care model is the lack of regulations to ensure proper care.
The regulations vary from province to province. The public was surprised to learn the stiff unannounced weeklong inspections of Ontario care homes had been watered down recently.
Under the guise of reducing red tape and management’s paperwork, the austere inspections were replaced with shorter pre-announced inspections demanding less paperwork. So much for cutting red tape.
In Saskatchewan, the local health districts started about 10 years ago having their senior executives visit and inspect long term care homes.
That practice seems a little cozy and open to abuse. Police aren’t allowed to investigate their own officers, so why should health officials be allowed to inspect seniors’ homes?
An independent inspector is needed.
The one aspect begging for a law is minimum employee-to-guest ratios that ensures more than 25 minutes a daytime for each guest to have medications administered, help getting dressed, help eating, bathroom assistance and bathing.
Ron Walter can be reached at ronjoy@sasktel.net
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the position of this publication.
