ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!

According to a recent article in the Toronto Star, since January 15, 2021, 2721 residents of long-term care homes and 8 staff members have died from COVID-19. Read here. Thousands more are sickened, neglected and denied basic rights! Since the pandemic began, some 87% of all COVID deaths in Ontario have been among those over the age of 70 and about 61% of deaths have been in long-term care homes.

The long-term care system is broken and has been for many years!  We are slowly losing a generation of people to this pandemic. They are our elders, our grandparents, mentors, visionaries who paved the path for a better world for all of us. And when they need more care than they can receive in their home, we move them to a medical institutional warehouse, remove their ability to make choices, take away their individuality and stifle their creativity. We schedule their day from morning to night, medicate them when they resist, and when family members become upset, we wonder why. Then COVID-19 arrived and the inadequacies of how we care for and about our elders in long-term care homes have come to light!

As of October 2020, there were 11 long-term care homes in Ontario that had either adopted or were in the process of adopting the Butterfly model of care.  These homes along with the Green House Project homes in the U.S. that have embraced transformative culture change have reported better outcomes both pre and during the COVID-19 pandemic and have experienced fewer deaths than the institutional models of care that exist in most of our traditional long-term care homes. 

Please consider sending an email to your local MPP or City Councillor urging them to look at what these homes have done so that the Ontario government can bring an end to the inhumane treatment and needless deaths of our vulnerable elders.  Enough is enough!