Stranded without home care for five weeks No help for 79-year-old with Parkinson’s after couple moves to new neighbourhood By: Kevin Rollason Posted: 5:51 PM CDT Wednesday, Jul. 30, 2025

The wife of a 79-year-old man who has Parkinson’s disease was forced to be his sole caregiver for five weeks after home care was cut off because they had moved to a more accessible house a 10-minute drive away.

Julie Guard said her husband’s four daily home care visits were halted once they moved to a bungalow near Osborne Village from their two-storey home in the Wolseley area.

Guard, a full-time history and labour studies professor at the University of Manitoba, said her husband, Seth Wigderson, uses a walker and depends on home care attendants to get him up and dressed in the morning, prepare breakfast, lunch and dinner, put on his compression socks, undress him and put him to bed, disconnect and connect his urinary catheter, and help him shower twice a week.

“Without home care, I do all the personal care,” the 72-year-old said. “It takes two hours in the morning and an hour at bedtime as well as the other work.

“Assuming the goal of home care is to enable people to age safely and with dignity at home, the lack of any home care at all, even for people like my spouse, who has been assessed as requiring a full day of visits, that assumption is faulty.”

Guard said home care told her the problem is that while a schedule was ready to go, they didn’t have enough staff to fulfil it.

Guard said it was only after speaking to a Free Press reporter on Tuesday, who began making phone calls to the government, that home care called her Tuesday night to say workers would be assigned to fulfil the new schedule.

“Manitoba is failing those of us who need and are entitled to care as we age or become disabled or both,” Guard said.

“I believe the Manitoba government needs to make adequate funding for home care a priority so that everyone who is entitled to it, gets the home care they need, insufficient though that is.”

Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara said while the couple lost home care for weeks, it wasn’t their fault.

“I would say their move didn’t cause them to lose home care. I would say the system failed this family and that is unacceptable,” Asagwara said.

“Families shouldn’t feel like they’re being punished for a move they have to make and lose services as a result. My office has looked into this and, of course, made sure that this family will have home care in place very quickly.”

 

The minister’s office is looking into the matter and has asked the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority to prevent such a situation from happening again.

“Our health care system should be flexible enough to ensure the continuity of care no matter how far someone moves within their city.”

The family’s complaint took place days after home care workers came forward to say they felt overwhelmed and burned out because of the heavy caseloads that have resulted from the installation of a centralized scheduling system in March. That system was recommended after a cancer patient died in 2023 before she received home care because she was incorrectly classified.

Earlier this month, workers complained reaching the central office was problematic owing to long wait times, while hundreds of home care visits, representing about one-quarter of the total, were cancelled.

Guard said while she is grateful the hardship is ending, the new schedule will be problematic because, instead of coming around 8 a.m. to get her husband up, they will come at about 9:45 a.m., which is when transportation comes on Tuesdays and Thursdays to take him to a day program.

“If a resident moves to a new zone of home care coverage, that is no reason for their care to be delayed, certainly not by five weeks.”–Noah Schulz

As well, the worker will come to help Wigderson with dinner at 4 p.m. – earlier than in the past and usually before he returns from the day program; he won’t get help to get ready for bed until 8:30 or 9 p.m., when he needs it earlier.

Wigderson himself, a retired history professor emeritus at the University of Maine — Augusta, agrees the schedule “will be a work in progress for sure.

“It still needs some tweaking. I received a better care schedule at our other house.”

Noah Schulz, provincial director of the Manitoba Health Coalition, said no appointments should be missed because a client has moved.

“If a resident moves to a new zone of home care coverage, that is no reason for their care to be delayed, certainly not by five weeks,” Schulz said.

“Patients are suffering due to the home care staffing crisis and a failure to properly communicate across the system and schedule care appropriately. To ensure continuity of care, adequate staffing and scheduling systems must be in place to effectively connect health care providers to patients where and when they are needed.”

A WRHA spokesperson said they encourage home care clients and their family members who have concerns to contact their case co-ordinator.

“When a home care client moves from one community area to another, we strive to ensure continuity of care,” the spokesperson said. “However, delays in resuming services may occur depending on staff availability in the new community area.

“The vast majority of home care visits are provided as scheduled, and we continue to prioritize calls as needed to support safe, high-quality client care in the community.”

The spokesperson added the health authority is speaking with government unions to identify staffing needs and to bolster recruitment efforts.

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca