OLTCA campaign takes
off like ‘wildfire’ in Almonte
Wednesday, November
22, 2006 -- Natalie Miller
A part of the community for nearly 30 years, service
clubs and churches have come to support Almonte
Country Haven, an 82-bed nursing home in the small
town of 4,600 people, located 50 kilometres from
the nation’s capital.
If the Province introduces an Act
that imposes limited licencing on older homes
like Almonte Country Haven, the future care of
seniors in their home communities could be uncertain.
Almonte seniors deserve to be cared for in their
home community, say opponents of the Long Term
Care Homes Act.
To express their displeasure, area
residents, long-term care workers and family members
signed hundreds of postcards that raise concerns
about the Act, which were delivered to their local
provincial politician.
“This community has supported
these homes,” says Rick Gourlie, administrator
of Almonte Country Haven and area captain of the
Ontario Long Term Care Association’s advocacy
campaign.
He 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.”
“To close our home and move
people out – it would be devastating. They
(would) have to leave their community.”
Critics of the Act say it threatens
the future of older long-term care homes because
it puts a 10-year deadline on nursing home’s
operating licences and provide no plan for what
happens before or after that. After seven years
government can decide to do anything it wants
with the older homes, including close them and
move the beds to another community, the OLTCA
says.
With no funding commitment for the
structural renewal of older homes, current and
future residents will face uncertainty for the
next decade while continuing to live in three-
or four-bed ward rooms. About 35,000 nursing home
residents live in older homes and would be impacted
by the new Act, if passed.
As the Almonte-area designated captain
of the OLTCA campaign, Gourlie invited the five
other OLTCA member homes in the area via e-mail
to appoint a representative to take on the campaign
in their home and attend a meeting with Norm Sterling,
Lanark-Carleton MPP. Almonte collected about 400
postcards and presented Sterling with several
hundred more.
“There must have been 1,000
postcards on the table,” says Gourlie.
“This (campaign) took off
like wildfire.”
Almonte hosted multiple staff meetings
to familiarize its employees with how the proposed
Long Term Care Homes Act could impact them.
A family council meeting left relatives
“aghast. They’re interested because
they see the inequity in it,” says Gourlie.
For instance, in Manitoba, there
are 60 residents living in four-bed wards while
in Ontario there are 35,000. “People are
amazed and somewhat ashamed,” says Gourlie.
“I think it’s up to the government
(to support) care providers who have been doing
a good job.”
Forest Hill Administrator Sarah
Ferguson-McLaren attended the meeting with Sterling.
While Forest Hill, OMNI’s sister home in
Kanata, is a new home, Ferguson-McLaren spoke
about the injustice.
“This perspective really
added to the overall picture,” Gourlie says.
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