A front page story from Friday’s Daily News should become required reading at Northern Health offices across the North on Monday morning. The article which examines the state of the home support program in Prince Rupert doesn’t leave one with a very good impression of the state of our care for our seniors in the Northwest.
Citing anonymous sources in the Health service and interviewing advocates for seniors in the region, the impression is that of a service that gives short shrift to those in the most need in our community.
With the economy in the state that it is in at the moment, many families have had to leave the area leaving Seniors to fend for themselves dependent on the help of Northern Health workers, a group of seemingly overworked and intimidated workers who appear to be near the breaking point.
It’s an article that raises more than few questions, which one hopes can be answered and remedied by Northern Health. Perhaps its now time for Northern Health officials to put down the stop watches and return a few calls.
While they’re at it, perhaps they could pick up a pen and provide some clear guidelines and answers to the far too many troublesome concerns examined in this front page story.
HOME SUPPORT STOPWATCH HAS SENIORS, STAFF FUMING
Elderly say they no longer get the time they need for some ‘home help’
By James Vassallo
The Daily News
Friday January 5, 2007
Pages one and two
Northern Health is being painted as uncaring and heavy-handed by seniors advocates, while employees say the authority is operating in a climate of intimidation as it puts stringent limitations on workers’ ability to provide home support services to those who desperately need them.
“This town has some serious problems, because so many elders have been left alone in their homes and their children have had to move off for work because of the economy,” said Northern Health employee who asked to remain anonymous because they feared they may lose their job.
“The workers are becoming demoralized, the people who are being affected by cuts are demoralized – it’s not a good situation for anyone it’s dangerous when people become depressed and demoralized.”
Some seniors have seen their home support hours cut by as much as 50 per cent and advocates say they could be facing imminent harm, a measure that seems nonsensical to many in light of both provincial and local mandates espousing a desire to keep seniors in their homes for as long as possible.
Some in need of home support are budgeted slivers of time that often start the moment a session with another client ends. Travel time is taken out of that client’s allocation, so a half an hour budgeted for someone who needs help with a meal becomes 20 minutes and families of those using the service are now being told to have quick meal fixes or microwave dinners ready to order to fit within the time constraints.
Some clients are being given as little as 15 minutes, with no flexibility to extend the time further.
“With five minutes on each side to travel, they might have five minutes with the client in that case,” the employee said, noting that while five minutes may be adequate in some cases, such as to help someone take a pill, some medication needs to be taken with food, again forcing an important task into an impossibly narrow time frame.
In fact, the time management has gotten so ridiculous, they explained, that if a client is on a bowel routine – once every two days – they have to have it on schedule for help to be present.
The employee also noted that home support workers are not permitted to help those in need in any way beyond what has been determined by a case worker. Hence, if they were to come upon a filthy bathtub or toilet, they would not be permitted to clean it unless giving the client a bath of helping them go to the bathroom was an outlined task for the support worker.
“If they were caught, they’d be fired. Not reprimanded – fired,” said the employee, who acknowledged that many home support workers are now using personal time to ensure those most desperate for help get a little more.
“They are not allowed to do laundry, they are not allowed to clean-up around the person, they can wipe the table down and do the dishes only if a meal is being made for that person.”
Peggy Davenport, who sits on the city’s North Coast Health Advisory Committee, cites a litany of changes designed to confuse and discourage clients from using home support.
The list includes the fact that support workers are allowed to tell clients what they can’t do, but not what they can; that they are pressured to get families and friends to do tasks for them instead of the worker doing it; that seniors never know who will be coming to help them, allowing for no continuity of care, that costs have more than doubled; and simple tasks necessary for health safety, such as checking in the fridge to see if food has spoiled, are no longer permitted.
The discontent with the system also seems to have spread to the authority’s physicians.
While no doctors from the Northern Health region who were contacted were willing to go on record with their growing concerns at the moment, they’ve kept few secrets from their patients bout the frustration.
“The doctors are angry with Northern Health,” said Marion Weir, senior’s centre president.
“They say no one will listen to them.”
North Coast MLA Gary Coons, who has spent nearly six months asking for information from NH, said he’s been stonewalled at nearly every turn.
The MLA has still not be given simple information he has asked for, such as the number of clients receiving home support on the North Coast.
Coons relayed that not only has he not been able to get the information he requested on the issue, but in a recent meeting with the new Northwest Chief Operating Office, Rowena Holoien, he was informed by the region head that what information he had been given was inaccurate.
The information that has been supplied is from 1999 and details how light-housekeeping services will no longer be provided, although the policy was not put officially into place until Feb. 15, 2006.
However, Coons believes the NH position is in direct conflict with a later 2001 Ministry of Health policy that states clearly that light housekeeping includes ‘a minimum set of household tasks required to maintain a safe and supportive environment for clients and includes cleaning, laundry and meal prep,” as well as The Ministry of Health’s web page and the 2006 version of the Home and Community Care Guide that note that home care services include “light household tasks that help maintain a safe and supportive home.”
He also has a recent letter from Health Minister George Abbott that again indicates the service should be offered.
Instead, many seniors have had what little help and social contact they were getting slashed while space limitations in the city’s primary care facility, Acropolis Manor, are preventing those in need from getting care elsewhere as well.
Recently, a local woman was denied entry to Acropolis and three days later she broke her hip.
“Now she’s on the Fourth floor (of the hospital) which is exactly where she doesn’t want to be,” said Weir, noting that several individuals who haven’t been living in Rupert have been admitted to the facility ahead of residents.
She’ll probably never get out and if she does she’ll probably break the other hip.”
Calls on this issue to Northern Health have not been returned.
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