Garden Terrace community
expresses support for OLTCA campaign
Thursday, November 16,
2006 -- Natalie Miller
Signatures are accumulating on a petition at Garden
Terrace that raises concerns about the Province’s
proposed Long Term Care Homes Act.
Director of care Elisabeth Hinton says the Kanata
long-term care home’s administrator, Karl
Samuelson, will present the petition to the area’s
local MPP next week.
Garden Terrace has placed the petition, information
cards and buttons in the nursing home’s
living room for families, staff and residents
to read and collect. The petition is part of an
Ontario Long Term Care Association (OLTCA) campaign
to send the Province a message about its concerns
with the proposed new Long Term Care Homes Act.
In the proposed Act, “government has forgotten
the needs of 35,000 residents who live in older
homes and placed a cloud of uncertainty over the
future of their home and access to services in
over 200, mostly rural, communities,” says
the OLTCA in a news release.
“The more people know about what is in
this Act, the more they are concerned,”
says executive director Karen Sullivan.
The OLTCA is asking operators, residents, families
to solicit their local MPPs for support in helping
secure the future of their long term care home
and the care they need.
Under the Act’s proposed limited licensing
component, about half of the province’s
long-term care homes will be given an operating
licence that expires in 10 years with no plan
for what happens before or after. After seven
years government can decide to do anything it
wants for whatever reason, including close the
home and move the beds to another community, the
OLTCA says.
Given that Garden Terrace is a new home that
opened its doors in early 2003 and the limited
licensing component of the proposed Act impacts
older homes, Elisabeth wondered if there would
be support for the campaign from the Garden Terrace
community.
“Our concern is with that campaign, being
an (‘A’-classified) home, our family
members may not be interested,” she says.
“But we’ve seen a lot of signatures
from family members. People are stopping and taking
a look.”
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