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#CHANGELTCNOW!

As you know we are working with CARP Ottawa to bring about transformative culture change in Ontario’s long-term care homes through a grassroots movement.  To this end we have asked the members of CARP Ottawa and its collaborating organizations in Ontario to send an email to their own local MPP’s about this matter.  We would like to ask you, our blog followers, to do the same.

Thank you to all the blog followers and friends who responded to our last request by sending letters to Minister Fullerton to recommend that CARP Ottawa be appointed to the Independent Commission on Long-term Care.

In the end, only three individuals were appointed to the newly named Independent Long-term Care COVID-19 Commission – Associate Chief Justice Frank Marrocco, Angela Coke and Dr. Jack Kitts. Now it is even more imperative to bring awareness and influence regarding this change to not only the Commissioners but also to our local politicians. 

Here’s How YOU Can Help

Send the email below to your own local MPP (contact info here) and copy your local mayor or city councillor (contact info here). Personalize the email with your own words on the need for culture change in Ontario’s long-term care home system. Or if you and your family have been affected by the COVID-19 virus, describe the impact it had on you.     

Copy us at our email changeltcnow@gmail.com We’d like to know how many of you are still interested.

Subject line: CARP Ottawa calls for transformative culture change in Ontario’s long-term care homes.

Email:

As a member of your constituency and someone who is very concerned about the long-term care home system in Ontario, I would like to express my support for Ontario’s Independent Long-term Care COVID-19 Commission.  However, I believe strongly that a transformative culture change is needed to fix the systemic failings apparent in these homes. 

I agree with Minister Fullerton and Premier Ford who have said on many occasions, “We have been clear the long-term care home system in Ontario is broken.”  Now we must fix it.

There are new models of care that exist in the U.S., Europe and even in Ontario, which have embraced the same guiding principles: a relationship-based approach to care; person and family-centred care; small home-like environments; higher staff to resident ratio; full time, well-paid staff who are trained in empathy and culture change and an environment where residents, staff and families feel a part of a community.

These new models have all embraced transformative culture change and have achieved much better outcomes than our traditional homes in Ontario.  We don’t need to reinvent the wheel. 

These outcomes include a decrease in the use of medications, in the number of aggressive incidents, in the number of hospital visits, in the amount of food waste and staff sick time, all the while increasing positive interactions with staff, families and residents.

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

My request is that you bring this urgent need for a transformative culture change in Ontario’s long-term care homes to the attention of Minister Fullerton and Premier Ford. If you would like more details on the existing models or this kind of culture change, please contact CARP Ottawa at changeltcnow@gmail.com

I look forward to hearing from you.

Your name…

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What does transformative culture change mean for: Infrastructure

Keys

Many LTC (Long-term Care) homes in Ontario are old and outdated with some residents living four to a room and sharing one bathroom.

  • Support shift from institutional to home-like environments.
  • Require facilities (existing and new) to create an environment that supports a culture of person-centred care, shared living spaces, and private bedrooms.
  • Shorten provincial timelines for requirement of homes to meet most recent standards for LTC building design.

What does transformative culture change mean for: Inspections

  • Use cumulative reports of LTC home inspections and data to guide timely improvements in Ontario’s provincial LTC system. Engage family councils, residents, families and front-line staff in this process.
  • Evolve the role of LTC inspectors to that of compliance advisors or resource persons who foster a partnership between government funders and providers of care.

What does transformative culture change mean for: Families/caregivers

  • Value, support, recognize and respect families and caregivers as part of the community in the home.
  • Activate timely and up-to-date communication protocols between families and LTC homes when a crisis occurs.
  • Support and help maintain family-resident relationships when a crisis occurs.

If you have any questions, please contact us

 

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What does transformative culture change mean for: Staff and Volunteers?

Keys

Working Conditions

  • Value, support, recognize and respect all staff and volunteers for their work.
  • Provide fair compensation with fitting salaries and benefits including sick leave.
  • Ensure staff positions are full-time wherever possible with staff dedicated to working only in one long-term care home and with realistic
  • Provide more hours for direct care.

 Recruitment and Retention

  • Recruit staff and volunteers who exhibit emotional intelligence, empathy, compassion, have a willingness and ability to learn new approaches, and work as a team.
  • Actively involve staff and volunteers in decision-making that is integral to better resident care.

Education / Training

  • Educate staff and volunteers on relationship-based approaches.
  • Strengthen staff and volunteer skills in empathy, social interaction and team work.
  • Provide timely, on-the-job continuing education for staff and volunteers that is responsive to changing residents’ needs.

If you have any questions, email us at:  ChangeLTCNow@gmail.com

 

 

 

 

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Transformative Culture Change: Key Messages

Keys

CARP Ottawa, as noted in previous blog posts, is advocating for transformative culture change.  This post will be the first of three that describes what this actually means along with the key messages detailing what elements are necessary to bring this change to fruition and improve quality care and quality of life for residents in long-term care homes in Ontario.

Transformative culture change means:
  • Using a relationship-based approach to care where residents, staff and families feel part of a community and are treated with dignity and respect;
  • Setting up small home-like environments;
  • Providing more hours of direct care for residents;
  • Employing full time, well-paid staff, who are trained in empathy and culture change;
  • Recognizing families and caregivers as integral members of the team:
  • Engaging volunteers who are trained in empathy and culture change.

Key messages have been developed for staff and volunteers, infrastructure, inspections, and families/caregivers. All the key messages need to be operationalized within a transformative culture change approach in which quality care is understood within a relationship-based environment where residents, staff, volunteers, and families are treated with dignity and respect and feel part of a community.  The key messages will appear in the next two blog posts.

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TIME, MONEY AND A WRECKING BALL?

Time

MoneyWrecking ball

There is no quick fix. It will take time, money and a wrecking ball — along with a new public attitude toward aging to fix Canada’s long-term care facilities.

The following is an excerpt from a CBC interview on June 27th, 2020 by Evan Dyer.

“Long-term care needs a long term solution. It’s not going to get fixed overnight. And our concern certainly now at the Canadian Nurses Association is it’ll be a sort of duct tape solution — throw a few more staff in and pay them a little bit more and it will be fine. And it won’t.
There are fundamental issues that need to be tackled in long-term care. So you have people in rooms of four or two, or you have a single room with a Jack and Jill bathroom — all kinds of places for disease to move.

It’s hard to imagine but many of those places don’t have air conditioning. So one of the things that staff do to make residents more comfortable is they will congregate them in a lounge or in a hallway and put large fans on them to help them cool off. Well, that’s a recipe for disaster right there. But pandemic measures on their own won’t lead to lasting change unless Canadians themselves change the way they think about aging and elder care.”  See full article here.

Michael Villeneuve, Chief Executive Officer of the Canadian Nurses Association.

 

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Help us change Long-term Care NOW!

Please join our grassroots movement to bring transformative culture change to Ontario’s long-term care homes.  You can do this by sending the following letter, or something similar in your own words, to the Minister of Long-term Care, Merrilee Fullerton. Please copy your own MPP (MPP names and emails are here) and CARP Ottawa at changeltcnow@gmail.com to help us evaluate the interest in this campaign.

“Dear Minister Fullerton, (Merrilee.fullerton@ontario.ca)

Thank you for setting up the Independent Commission to look at what changes need to be made regarding our long-term care home system in Ontario.

As a concerned citizen of Ontario, I would like to strongly recommend that you invite CARP Ottawa to have representation on this Commission.  CARP is Canada’s largest non-partisan advocacy association for older Canadians, with more than 320,000 members, most of whom are in Ontario.  In the past, CARP has successfully advocated for more federal funding for homecare, a reduction in the senior’s drug co-pay in Ontario, free high-dose influenza vaccine to adults over 65 in Ontario and an inquiry into safety and staffing in Ontario long-term care homes.

With seniors in Canada outnumbering the number of children, policy making in Canada that affects other Canadians is more important now than it has ever been.  CARP past successes in healthcare, combined with the strength in their membership uniquely positions them to represent the interests of older Ontarians.  CARP is advocating for a transformative culture change within the long-term care home system.

I believe, as you have stated many times, that Ontario’s Long-term Care Home system is broken.  CARP has a vision for transforming our long-term care home system.

As a society we all want a long-term care home system that affords our family members a better quality of life.  Please act now to bring transformative culture change to Ontario’s long-term care home system.

Thank you for your consideration.

I look forward to hearing from you.”

Your name

 

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#ChangeLTCNow

The residents, families, and staff of Ontario’s long-term care homes need your help.
An urgent update on our work re: Ontario’s Long-term Care Home System.

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Taken from WordPress.com

We have joined the CARP Advocacy Project whose goal is to strengthen Ontario’s Long-term Care Home system through a transformative culture change.

The government has announced that an Independent Commission will be set up in July to review Ontario’s long-term care home system and propose improvements. CARP Ottawa has submitted a request to be involved in the Commission and has recommended a transformative culture change for long-term care homes.

A transformative culture change includes: a relationship-based approach to care; person and family-centred care; small home-like environments; higher staff to resident ratios; full time staff who are well-trained in empathy and culture change; and an environment where residents, staff and families feel a part of a community.  The Eden Alternative, Green House Project, Hogewey Villages and Butterfly Homes are examples that have been implemented in Europe, Australia, the U.S. and recently a few in Canada.

HELP US CREATE A GRASSROOTS MOVEMENT – #ChangeLTCNow

We want organizations and individuals to provide input that will encourage the Commission to consider recommendations for transformative culture change. Awareness of the need for major reforms in LTC has never been so evident. This is a unique opportunity.

We need to act – NOW.

Support this grassroots movement. Get involved.

Email – changeltcnow@gmail.com
Be a part of #ChangeLTCNow.

 

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Long-term care reform: what seniors need and deserve

 

18green_house_project 

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.

“…….The COVID-19 crisis has highlighted that we need new ways of providing LTC to protect residents from plagues of communicable disease. But we also need to eradicate the noncommunicable plagues of old age identified by the architects of the Eden Alternative — loneliness, helplessness, and boredom.

We need new models of care that prioritize human relationships, dignity, and safety. That means a moratorium on new LTC facilities that don’t look like Sherbrooke Community Centre’s Poppy Lane…..” (a long-term care home featured on this blog site on November 16, 2017)  says Dr. Michael Rachlis, a public health physician and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Toronto Dalla Lana School of Public Health that appeared in The Star on May 8th, 2020.  Read more here

 

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Another innovative model – now in Waterloo

20BlogPostWaterlooMay

“Sunnyside Home is adopting a new approach to make the Kitchener long-term care facility feel more like a home, and staff like family, for its residents with “dementia.”………

Sunnyside has been working for a few years to improve care by moving away from a medical model. The butterfly approach will take that to the next level to ensure residents have a full life” as reported in an article by Johanna Weidner in The Waterloo Chronicle.

This is another example of the increasing number of innovative long-term care home models that are striving for the transformative culture care we are hoping for in the future for Ontario. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 virus crisis has obviously put a damper on this kind of major change from moving forward at this time. We look forward to encouraging these homes in their quest for culture change once this crisis is over.

 

 

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COVID-19: Hats Off to Long-Term Care Home Workers

Hats Off!

Across Canada, there is a group of health care workers, those working in long term care homes, who are placing their own lives at risk while they do all that they can to care for and protect their residents. Residents living in long term care homes are particularly vulnerable to COVID-19 and long term care homes are one of the toughest places to contain an outbreak. This is because the people who live there are elderly, often have compromised immune systems, and they live and socialize in close quarters –in some of the older homes, even 4 per room.

Long term care homes are now prohibiting visitors, which adds more stress to both residents and staff. Residents, who look forward to visits from family and friends, may experience feelings of isolation and loneliness and staff are not only concerned about their own health but also those in their care. As one staff member has said, “You don’t know who’s going to still be there the next day.”

However, there are some amazing stories that are now coming out about the creative ways that long term care workers are promoting social connectedness while keeping residents physically distant from one another.  Read more here.

Our hats go off to these wonderful, caring, compassionate health care workers. Thank you very much for everything you are doing to try and keep your residents safe and healthy!

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Could Ontario’s long-term care home system be any more complicated?

There are 626 long-term care homes in Ontario (2019); of these, there are 3 categories:

For-Profit: 58%,   Not-for-Profit: 24%,   Municipal: 16%

What are the commonalities?

  • Funding: All 3 types are funded by the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care through the Local Health Integration Network (LHIN) based on the same formula.
    In addition: Municipalities can opt to top up funding for their homes through tax payers’ dollars.  Some of the other homes have either foundations or fundraising programs that can top up their funding for capital expenditures or program enhancement.
  • Admission/wait lists: All 3 types are subject to a central admission/wait list process controlled by the LHIN
  • Resident costs: In all 3 types, residents are required to contribute a co-payment for accommodation of basic ($1848.73), semi-private ($2,228.63) or private ($2640.78).  These costs are as of 2018 and there is a cost of living increase each July.  
  • Legislation:  All 3 types are subject to the same standards, rules and regulations.    

 

  • Management:
  • The for-profit long-term care homes are managed by their corporate office through their Chief Executive Officers (CEO’s)
  • The not-for-profit long-term care homes are managed by a Board of Directors through their CEO’s
  • The municipal or city-run long-term care homes have a formal mechanism in place for their management through a committee of City Council and a staff director.   

Please note that unlike long-term care homes, retirement homes are not publicly funded and operate outside the domain of the long-term care home system.   More details here.  

Please comment on the blog if further clarifications are required. 

 

 

 

 

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Will this ever end?

blog feb2020The recent CBC news article regarding a female resident in an Alberta nursing home who was abused before she died from dehydration and a urinary tract infection is appalling and should never happen in our health care system in Canada. Unfortunately, abusive incidents do occur and indicate yet again that traditional medical models of care in long-term care homes need to be changed.  Read more here.

Yes, our long-term care homes need to keep residents safe and comply with regulations but if person centered care was provided where residents matter and are considered to be a member of the family rather than a person to be “cared for”, then abuse would not occur.

The CBC news report says that the nursing home reported that “there was a shortage of staff and experience” and that “employees needed better education about nutrition, hydration and monitoring infections”. Yes, staff need to have that knowledge but surely it is more than that! Staff education and training is required in order to change the culture of care from one of “giving” care to a relationship based approach with the residents.

Innovative models of long-term care that are featured in this blog will do just that.

Please forward this post to your friends and colleagues and if you are on social media, please share with your followers.

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