EDITORIAL
Closing homes causes more damage than displaced residents, staff
While caring for society’s elderly in a supportive and dignified fashion is their utmost purpose, long-term care homes serve a broader community role, particularly in rural Ontario.

In the small community of Long Sault, local seniors venture to their area nursing home to receive their flu shot instead of making the trip to Cornwall.

In the municipality of Brighton, people using pacemakers stop in at their neighbourhood long-term care home to get a pacemaker check.

In many communities, high school students descend on nursing homes for co-op placements or community service hours. It is here they dissolve their fear of nursing homes and gain a respect for their elders. In some cases, students go on to pursue education to become the next generation of caregivers for this country’s growing population of seniors.

Particularly in small communities, the long-term care home is a part of its identity. In Easton’s Corners-Jasper where Rosebridge Manor is located, the long-term care home is the area’s largest employer.

Closing a long-term care home not only uproots residents and staff but destroys a host of community connections as well.

The Province is proposing a new Long Term Care Homes Act that would put a 10-year deadline on nursing home’s operating licences and provide no plan for what happens before or after that. If the Act is passed, after seven years the government can decide to do anything it wants with the older homes, including close them and move the beds to another community.

Without a funding commitment for the structural renewal of older homes, current and future residents could face uncertainty for the next decade.
A ray of hope however came in the form of a Private Member’s motion Nov. 23. All three provincial political parties voted unanimously in the legislature in favour of the motion by Kitchener-Waterloo MPP Elizabeth Witmer calling on government to commit to a plan of action to invest in the upgrading of older B and C classified long-term care homes.
Meanwhile, an Ontario Long Term Care Association advocacy campaign continues at homes across Ontario. The pressure is now on the government to follow through with the motion the three parties supported.
“To close our home and move people out – it would be devastating,” says Rick Gourlie, administrator of Almonte Country Haven.

While the immediate concern is stability for residents and staff, the government shouldn’t look past the vaster role nursing homes serve as well.
With Almonte Country Haven being a part of its community for nearly 30 years, service clubs and churches have come to support the nursing home in the town of 4,600 people, located 50 kilometres from the nation’s capital.
The administrator points to the involvement of the local Civitan and other service clubs and the support of the church community.

“It’s called community inclusion. When you have community inclusion you have stability.”

Should the government approve the Act as it reads now without taking action to invest in capital renewal of older homes, it could potentially result in the closure of these important community centres and ultimately unravel part of the fabric that binds Ontario’s small towns.