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Where is the public outcry?

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Recently published in an Ontario newspaper:

“I recently met a group at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. We spent time in front of the controversial Chagall painting that was to be sold abroad. The auction was stopped due to public outcry. The result? The painting was returned to the walls of the National Gallery

One of the group remarked on the freedoms Canadians enjoy, such as voicing an opinion, being heard and respected. This comment got me wondering: Why is there no public outcry about our long-term care (LTC) homes in Ontario? How do we change our apathy, demand not just an incremental change but for a change in the model of delivery?

We must exercise our privileged right to be heard. Our most fragile and vulnerable population deserves our outrage. Address your concerns to your new city councillors and your MPPs.”

Submitted by Rose Ann, a caregiver (Rose Ann is pictured above with her spouse, Ron, who has since passed away)

 

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More Transformations Coming!

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It looks like Peel Region’s initiative is continuing to have a positive influence.  First the City of Toronto followed suit and now Primacare Living has decided to bring the Butterfly Program to St Catherines, Brampton, London, and near Hamilton according to the October 24th Toronto Star article.

Could we be on a roll?  If so, why is nothing happening in Brantford, Ottawa, Kingston, North Bay and other cities in Ontario?

And as we have highlighted in previous posts, it does not necessarily have to be the Butterfly Model!  Moira Welsh, the Star reporter, did research on other innovative models and stated “The Green House Project and Eden Alternative – both created by American Geriatrician Dr. Bill Thomas – share similar philosophies that favour small homes, social interaction and friendships between staff and people in their care.”

Let’s get going folks!  Now that the Municipal Elections are over in some provinces, you can send letters asking Mayors and City Councillors to champion transformation in one of the long-term care homes in your region. 

You can help by sharing our blog with your contacts and encouraging them to be followers.   Also, please share on your Facebook/Twitter accounts if you have them.

If we do nothing, nothing will change.

 

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6th Graders in a Long-Term Care Home?

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What is unusual about this picture?

Sherbrooke Community Centre Nursing Home in Saskatoon is the home to 263 high-needs residents. It’s also the site of an intergenerational school. Every year, after winning a city-wide lottery, a batch of sixth graders ditch the traditional classroom and spend a year attending school at Sherbrooke.  Listen to this story from CBC’s Sunday Morning radio show here.

At Sherbrooke, there are no classrooms, no desks, and no blackboards. Students get together with their teachers in the chapel in the morning and again at noon, but the rest of the time they are free to go where they want, and sit with anyone they feel like talking to.  The school is a life-changing experience for the elders as much as it is for the kids.

“If we didn’t see the kids, we would just be a bunch of old people in this building, and that is stark and it’s ugly. Without the kids, I just feel that a part of me dies,” one resident says.

In western Canada, Sherbrooke Community Centre Nursing Home is the first care home to register as an Eden Alternative ® home.

Another innovative model for us to consider….

Please share this with your friends and follow us on Facebook.

 

 

 

 

 

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Thanks to Betty for leading the way!

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Betty is in the centre flanked by the moderator and panelists

Betty is a past caregiver whose husband lived in a long-term care home.  She decided to increase awareness for innovation in our long-term care home system by organizing a panel at her church through the JOY (just older youth) program.

When asked “Do you think transforming our long-term care home system should be a municipal election issue”, the overwhelming response was “yes” (75 people).

If you agree, here is a draft letter you can personalize and send to those running in your ward on October 22nd.   Names and emails of candidates in Ontario wards can be found by searching “certified candidates for 2018 municipal election in (insert city name)”. There are only a few weeks left to plant these seeds.

If you are new to our blog,  scroll down to learn about the Butterfly model that  transformed a unit in one of the Region of Peel’s long-term care homes.

Please share this with your contacts and/or on your  Facebook or Twitter accounts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Here is what Judith, a past caregiver, has to say…

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“After many years of accessing services in the community, I finally had to place  Stewart into a long-term care home. My husband was among those least compliant.  A different environment could have made an incredible difference.  Even with all the improvements that are being promised, long-term care homes remain a desperate last resort for the loved ones of exhausted caregivers.   My long-term care home experience led me to firmly believe we need an innovative model.

Your blog presents compelling evidence that can change the way care is delivered in the final years.   I fervently hope that I will have a better option.  Thanks for your hard work to change the way care is delivered in long-term care homes.  It is very important.  Anything less is not going to make a substantive difference.”

Our blog has now highlighted 4 innovative models – the Butterfly Model, The Eden Alternative, The Green House and the Hogeway Villages.  All have been shown to enhance the quality of life for residents, families and staff.

If you agree with Judith, please make this a municipal election issue in your region by urging the candidates running in your Ward to champion innovation in long-term care homes –  either by attending all candidates meetings or by sending those running in your municipalities a letter or email.  Search for “certified candidates for 2018 municipal elections in your city “(i.e. Hamilton, Brantford, Kingston, Ottawa etc.)

And please share this with all your contacts and ask them to become “followers” of our blog too – to show support for this initiative.

 

 

 

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Kudos to Toronto for spreading innovation in long-term care homes

Toronto council has voted unanimously to bring change to city-run nursing homes with new programming that promises to improve the lives of seniors with dementia.  This change is similar to the work recently done in a Peel Region-operated dementia unit where residents, who once spent days staring at the floor, came back to life through friendship with staff trained in empathy-focused care.  Read more here.

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At the St. John’s Green House home in Penfield N.Y., residents eat together at a communal table. The Green House project focuses on residents’ emotional and social well-being.

If you want to see innovative models of long-term care homes introduced in your community:  One of the followers of our blog sent us some ideas on how we can influence our own local politicians, especially in light of the upcoming October 22nd Ontario municipal elections.  See below for her suggestions:

We are not talking about high tech solutions
We are talking about low tech, low cost solutions
Solutions to what?
Solutions to our broken institutional long-term care homes.

If you want our vote
You must not be afraid to change the culture in these homes
You must allow residents to engage in meaningful activities
If you want our vote.

Thousands more beds are being allocated to long-term care
Now is the time to lead others in an innovative social model
A model in which you and your family would be happy to live
If you want our vote.

Residents with dementia living in our long-term care homes deserve a better quality of life.  Please take just a few minutes to help these residents by sending an email or making a phone call to your local councillors or mayors.

And please click on the “follow” our blog button to provide more support to our cause and share with your own contacts.

 

 

 

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“A Program Like This Should Spread Like Wildfire”

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Staffer Chelsea Martens sits with Piotr (Peter) Wojcik while he peels an orange. The Butterfly program says touching food, peeling fruit and vegetables in advance of meals helps people with dementia start thinking about food and builds an appetite.(Randy Risling/Toronto Star).

The Toronto Star article “The Fix”, June 20th, 2018, states “in Peel Region, a couple of bureaucrats decided to take a risk on a care model that promotes, well, love…shoving aside the old clinical ways with plans for laughter, friendship, energy, tenderness, freedom and hope”.  And guess what?  It’s working!  Residents, staff and families from one unit are living as a community resulting in a decrease of aggressive incidents, decrease in psychotropic drugs as well as a decrease in staff sick days.

Click here to view the 21 minute video that shows how this unit was transformed. You will be amazed!

Are other municipal politicians gutsy enough to champion real change?  Mayor Tory seems to be.  He wants ‘The Fix’ in other Toronto nursing homes.  Read more here.

It is a mystery why there has not been a revolution to challenge the problems that have plagued our Ontario Long-Term Care Home system for decades.  But we can all start now by forwarding this blog post to all the candidates who will be running in the October Municipal elections to plant the seeds now and to demand that other cities embrace innovation as Peel has done.

As Peel City Councillor Ron Starr said “A program like this should spread like wildfire”.

And please forward this post to your contacts and encourage them to “follow” our blog to build up support for a transformation in our long-term care home system.

 

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CHANGING OUR SYSTEM, ONE LONG-TERM CARE HOME AT A TIME – IN ONTARIO!

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Sharing the “stuff of life” at a Butterfly Care Home in the U.K

Do you know what the main difference is between Ontario’s institutional long-term care home model and the U.K.’s Butterfly Model just adopted by Malton Village Long-Term Care Home in Peel, Ontario?

Relationships, kindness and compassion 

Sound familiar?  That’s because the Butterfly Model is similar to the Hogewey and Eden Alternative models which were highlighted in previous blog posts.

  • All of these 3 models allow time for staff to develop relationships with residents and families.  Our current medical model of care in Ontario does not.
  • The Butterfly model stresses a departure from “a culture of care that believes the best facilities can do for dementia patients is provide physical safety and hold them in a building” to “a transformation in the way people are cared for, with a focus on people’s emotions and the creation of homelike environments and everyday activities people enjoyed earlier in life”

After the success of its one year pilot project, Malton Village Long-Term Care Centre in Peel has become the first Butterfly Care Home in Ontario.  Read more here.

Once the election is over, contact your MPPs again to urge them to consider these success stories.  All the MPP posts are listed as vacant until the election is over.

AND PLEASE – encourage 3 or more of your contacts to “follow” our blog.  Long-term care home residents need our help!

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CHANGING OUR SYSTEM, ONE LONG-TERM CARE HOME AT A TIME!

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Concept drawing for proposed Dementia Village in Metro Vancouver

Do you know what the main difference is between Ontario’s institutional long-term care home system and the innovative social models like the one now being proposed by Providence Health Care in B.C.?

Relationships, relationships, relationships – between and amongst staff, residents, families and the community

What does this actually mean?

  • It means a “constructive culture of care” enabling staff to know who their residents and families are – and what their life was like before.
  • It means residents are involved in many meaningful activities according to their abilities and what brings them joy.
  • It means schedules and routines are flexible to match the residents’ preferences and needs.
  • It means the surrounding community is invited to actively participate.

Providence Health Care is developing a concept for Metro Vancouver, based on the Dutch Hogewey Village model (scroll down for our first blog post re Hogewey in September 2017), that incorporates the above philosophy.   Read more here.

Please contact your MPPs again to urge them to fund something similar, perhaps as a pilot project, in Ontario when approving the new 5,000 long-term care beds.

AND PLEASE – encourage 3 of your contacts to “follow” our blog.  If you agree with our stance,  we really need your help on this to increase our influence.

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Does This Look Like Home To You?

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Does this photo show the kind of “home” in which you would like to live?

If you have had a relative in a long term care home in Ontario, you will understand. It’s about the choice between a medical model vs a “relationship” / social model of care.

Would you want to live out your final years in one of our existing long term care homes?  If so, please tell us. We would love to hear from you.

If not, please contact your MPP to tell them our system is broken and we need to consider replicating the innovative homes that already exist – some of which are referenced in our previous blog posts. Now is the time since the government is funding 5,000 new beds over the next 4 years.   Don’t have your MPP contact info?  Click here.

Help spread the word by sharing this with at least 5 of your contacts.

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You Can Bring Joy to Life in Long-Term Care

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality.  To change something, build a new model that makes an existing model obsolete”

 R. Buckminster Fuller.  

Blog post #6

Barely a week goes by, when we hear yet another bad news story about our long-term care homes in Ontario. (See recent articles in the Ottawa Citizen and Toronto Star).

Despite the many millions of dollars injected into the system over the last 30 years, we seem to have fallen into an abyss from which we cannot escape.  Throwing good money after bad has not worked.  We need to transform our system!

The Ontario government has promised 5,000 new long-term care beds by 2021/22.  Models exist now such as Hogewey Villages (Netherlands), Eden Alternative models (in Canada and U.S.) and other innovative models which help to reduce aggressive incidents and promote quality of life.  Currently Langley, B.C. and Tasmania are building new homes designed after Hogewey Villages – 25 years after this model was created.

We cannot wait another 25 years for progress in Ontario. We need a willingness to act for significant change to our long-term care home system.  With new beds coming on stream, now is our opportunity to demand our government consider a new model of care!  Our residents deserve it.

The Ontario election is in June.  Please personalize the information in this post and send to your MPP urging them to address this situation!  Click here for MPP information.

And you can help to promote change by sharing this with all your contacts, posting on your Facebook page or on your Twitter account.  And FOLLOW US!

 

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90% of Ontario’s long-term care home residents have some form of dementia

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Why don’t we have more innovative dementia-friendly long-term care homes?  Ron Schlegel and his family started the ball rolling years ago when they developed Schlegel Villages in Ontario which included Memory Care Neighbourhoods.

Emma, Ron’s mom, was the catalyst for their innovative homes.   Her experience in a long-term care home “robbed her of her personhood”,  and “no effort was made to get to know who she was as a person and what gave her joy in life or caused her frustration.”  Ron wanted “to change the way those with dementia would be cared for in their final years” and created a new social model of care.

You can probably relate to Emma’s story – just take 2 minutes  and click here:    https://schlegelvillages.com/living/memory-care

Meet, email, send a letter or phone your MPPs to ask for their commitment to ensure that the 5,000 new beds will be awarded only to those organizations/companies who propose to build innovative, dementia-friendly environments.   See our previous posts which have highlighted many such models already in existence.   Your MPP info is here.

Please leave us a comment as we would love to know what YOU think.  You can help to promote change by sharing this with all your contacts, posting on your Facebook page or on your Twitter account.  And FOLLOW US!

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