Tories announce home-care pilot amid staffing shortage

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This article was published 01/08/2023 (819 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitoba has launched a $3.3-million pilot project aimed at keeping 200 rural seniors in their homes rather than being prematurely admitted to a personal care home.

The project is expected to start next spring in Brandon, Selkirk, Beausejour, Steinbach and Portage la Prairie. The idea is for “client-determined community care” to be added to home-care services for seniors who need more support than home care offers but don’t need to live in long-term care.

“Manitoba seniors wish to stay in the comfort of their homes and communities, and we are trying to satisfy that need,” Seniors and Long-Term Care Minister Scott Johnston said Tuesday.

Full details of the pilot project weren’t released.

Home care co-ordinators will be responsible for determining who is eligible and following up with clients.

Johnston said the province expects to start the public-tender process later this summer to identify approved service providers and launch the pilot program in spring 2024.

Asked how such a pilot project is sustainable considering the current staffing shortage, the minister said the government and municipalities have been trying to recruit more home-care workers and will continue to do so.

“That’s a fair question. Our government is striving to continue to enhance our staffing numbers,” Johnston said.

Tuition support for health-care aide education programs, which were announced previously, “could go a long way,” he said.

The pilot program may include additional nursing and respite services, support for caregivers, help with household tasks, and transportation, said Debbie Poole, regional lead of clinical planning for Prairie Mountain Health.

Poole said a disproportionate number of seniors have to move into care homes early because they don’t have enough support to stay at home.

During her time working with interdisciplinary teams at the health authority, Poole said she became aware of many examples where programs didn’t exist to help people with complex needs.

“Sadly, in many of these cases, interdisciplinary teams working with the families and clients saw that personal-care home placement was the only option,” Poole said.

Representatives from the Alzheimer Society of Manitoba and Steinbach-based Serving Seniors Inc. voiced their support for the project, which Johnston said was developed following consultations for the provincial seniors strategy the government announced two months ago.

Opposition politicians, however, dismissed the announcement as a pre-election distraction and pointed to Progressive Conservative cuts to services that could’ve helped seniors stay in their homes.

“We need more than pilot projects, and this is a government that’s had seven years to do something. And now, like two days before they have to stop making announcements, they’re making promises that aren’t going to actually happen until after the next election,” said Liberal leader Dougald Lamont.

“They completely ignored seniors and all of a sudden they’re desperate to reclaim them. It’s too little, too late.”

Uzoma Asagwara, health critic for the Manitoba NDP and MLA, said thousands of Manitobans don’t receive reliable home care under the existing program.

“This is an election announcement that is meant to be a distraction,” Asagwara said.

“Home care continues to be in a state of crisis as a result of their cuts.”

Last month, the government announced it planned to build six personal care homes to add more than 600 long-term care beds. That plan, combined with Tuesday’s pilot project announcement, “will go an awful long way” toward keeping elderly patients within their communities and avoiding long-haul hospital transfers that became more common earlier in the pandemic, Johnston said.

The minister said he’d work to stop those kinds of patient transfers.

“Most definitely. That’s an area that I don’t think anybody really wants to see happen. It’s a matter of accommodation, than it is moving people around for the sake of moving them around.”

He also echoed support for the government’s plan to establish an independent office to replace the former Protection for Persons in Care Office (PPCO) that operated within the government. Last week, the auditor general’s office of Manitoba released a damning report showing the PPCO failed to properly investigate, or dismissed as unfounded, complaints of abuse against personal-care home residents.

Johnston said he “100 per cent” supports the plan and said his department will work closely with the new independent office to ensure these types of “unforgivable situations” don’t happen.

katie.may@winnipegfreepress.com