To the Editor:
The debate rages on about how the Government should best provide care to the seniors of our province. On the one side, you have interest groups such as impacted families and the NDP party arguing for increased front line care workers and legislated minimum levels of care; and on the other hand, you have the current government with its increased emphasis on keeping seniors in their homes longer, and an increased reliance on efficiency consultants to find ways to reduce costs in providing the current levels of front line care.
My mother has been in a senior care home for the past 3 years, the first 2 at the Sunset Extendicare facility here in Regina. Two years ago, Linda Wacker (a Client Representative of the Regina Qu'Appelle Health Region, "RQHR") and myself met with a long-term care official of RQHR to discuss concerns I had about my mother's care and other troubling long-term care issues that I had witnessed. In my opinion, the primary cause to all of these problems was the habitual short-staffing of care-aides at Sunset Extendicare.
This first meeting with RQHR led to the forming of a concerned family members committee, which has been meeting for the past two years with the Sunset facility's management and with various senior officials from the Regina-Qu'Appelle Health Region regarding ongoing care concerns. Despite promises to the contrary, the level of care has never changed from what has appeared to many family members as being unsafe and/or inadequate.
Again, it is my view that the primary cause to the unsafe and inadequate personal care of our family members is the chronic understaffing of care-aides at the Sunset facility. The committee's record keeping has, in general, shown Sunset running below their "100%-staffing levels" approximately 50% of the time. Despite pressing Sunset management and the Regina Qu'Appelle Health Region on these shortfalls, the Sunset facility has not been able to consistently run their facility at full or near-full staffing levels.
In one of the last meetings between the Sunset family committee and the Regina Qu'Appelle Health Region, senior management of the RQHR were asked four different times why they refuse to make Sunset accountable to run their facility at the care-aide levels for which they are being funded at by the RQHR. These are tax-payers' monies, and it is troubling that the RQHR is not upholding its responsibility to make senior care homes accountable for the tax payer money they have been allocated.
Each of the four direct attempts to question senior management on why the RQHR refuses to ensure that Sunset runs their facility at the level of staffing they are being funded for was met with silence and not answered. Instead of spending tax payers' money on US-based consultants and Japanese senseis, the current government might actually find that better senior care can be achieved when their highly-paid bureaucrats actually execute the responsibilities they have been entrusted to carry out.
It is my opinion that the failure of the RQHR to adequately monitor senior care home conditions is a lapse in its duties towards both the home's residents and their families. The fact that families have not been able to find assistance from the RQHR regarding these matters shows to me, a clear need for the Province's current politicians to legislate/adopt a province-wide Seniors' Bill of Rights as the best way to protect this vulnerable group.
After reading the latest newspaper headlines, I am beginning to think that what is really needed, may be for a third-party consultant to be brought in to help point out to the leaders of our current government the same very facts that family members at the Sunset facility have been flagging for almost two years.
Carrie Klassen, Regina, SK.
