Category: How you can help!

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

On June 17, 2019, the Government of Canada released the country’s first-ever national dementia strategy: A Dementia Strategy for Canada: Together We Aspire

Status quo

  Relationship-based model of care

A fully-funded strategy will allow Canada to meet the challenges of dementia with a coordinated, focused approach to care and research. The strategy will address the overwhelming scale, impact and cost of dementia in Canada through three key objectives:

• Prevent dementia,
• Advance therapies and find a cure, and
• Improve the quality of life of people living with dementia and caregivers.

Within the report, it states that: “integrated, person-centered quality care based on best practices will be available across all care settings and people living with dementia will feel welcomed and well-cared for”. In this blog, you have read that we need to create person-centered, relationship-based long-term care homes. This is just one of the ways that we can improve quality care.

Today 90% of residents in long-term care homes have some form of cognitive impairment with over 65% having a diagnosis of dementia. The opportunities for change are now.

The federal election is October 21st, 2019. Attend All-Candidates Meetings in your Riding or write to your local MP candidates, and ask for a fully-funded national dementia strategy.

Did you know …

… that renovating an existing facility or increasing funding for education for staff has been going on for decades in Ontario and it just won’t do the trick?  We do know that there are many innovative models used in long term care that increase quality of life and decrease the need for medication (some examples in previous posts).

If you agree, please ask your MPP to urge the Ministry of Health to restrict funding for these new beds to those who will commit to an innovative environment and not the same old Ontario model!  For a list of all the Ontario MPPs and their contact information click here. 

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