Home-care shortages improve on paper — not for ailing Charleswood couple

Cristina Houston isn’t surprised when her mother’s home-care appointment is cancelled.

The U.S. woman’s mother has end-stage Parkinson’s disease. Her parents have been getting help from Manitoba’s home-care services for about six years ago.

There is a rotation of aides and nurses who visit the Charleswood house.

Four or five times a week, health-care aides provide respite to Houston’s 86-year-old father — whose back and neck arthritis qualifies him for home care, as well. Another aide is there four times daily to help with washroom breaks. A nurse visits in the evening to assist with a pump that administers medication directly into her mother’s stomach.

When a nurse or aide isn’t available, Houston’s father fills in. He also requires home care, Houston said, and has arthritis in his back and neck. (Houston lives in the United States.)

Lately, however, the cancellations have been more frequent; twice a week is “very common,” she said.

In one week earlier this month, there were four cancelled nursing visits.

“We’re told over and over again that… home care is not a guaranteed service,” she said. “It’s sad to see a system like that.”

Because of the uncertainty, Houston’s parents have, on occasion, turned to private care, which is expensive, making it “very difficult,” she said, adding the home care, when available is very helpful.

Home-care aide shortages persist, and cancelled visits are not unusual, their union said.

“We know that there’s still a lot of missed visits,” said Margaret Schroeder, president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 204, which represents upwards of 1,800 home-care aides in the province.

Shortages have been an issue since the COVID-19 pandemic, Schroeder said, adding there have been fewer complaints about service than there were a year ago.

Despite the experience of Houston’s parents, the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority has tracked fewer cancellations.

Cancelled visits spiked last summer — accounting for 3.71 per cent of all scheduled visits in July — after scheduling moved to a centralized system.

In September, the provincial government announced it had reverted to its previous scheduling system — assigning visits by Winnipeg neighbourhood — and that since July, it had hired 32 additional scheduling clerks.

Cancellations gradually declined, to 2.16 per cent in November, before jumping back to 3.17 per cent in December. A major blizzard on Dec. 18 and 19, and staff sick calls, contributed to the change, a WRHA spokesperson said.

Upwards of nine in 10 home-care visits occur as planned, the spokesperson said.

The health authority oversees approximately 17,000 visits daily. Clients or primary contacts are notified about cancellations “to ensure appropriate backup care plans are in place.”

Monthly cancellations from April through November generally tracked higher than 2024.

“There’s always cancellations, and there’s always having to readjust in the home-care business,” said Carmen Nedohin, past chair of the Canadian Association of Retired Persons Manitoba chapter.

“It doesn’t help the end user who desperately needs to have that home-care service come to them.”

CARP has suggested Manitoba’s new seniors advocate, who started in November, look into the home-care system. It’s a national issue, Nedohin noted.

“It’s really hard on families to continue to be told that they have to be the backup plan,” said Kathleen Cook, the Progressive Conservative health critic.

“In many cases, they simply can’t. It’s just not a sustainable way to promote care.”

Cook, the MLA for Roblin, called the NDP’s decision to centralize home-care services “terrible,” adding the government hasn’t “effectively undone the damage that they did with that decision.”

“There needs to be more priority and investment put into the home-care system, because the alternative — if home care is not there to support people living in their homes — is that people end up in emergency rooms,” she said.

“They end up in hospital beds. They end up on wait lists for personal-care homes.”

Staff shortages are a result of cuts under the Progressive Conservative government, Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara countered in a statement.

Asagwara noted cancelled home care visits are “disruptive and stressful, particularly for people with complex needs.”

“I understand that frustration, and I want families to know those experiences are taken seriously,” Asagwara’s statement said.

The New Democrats have focused on staffing, training and working directly with front-line workers to improve scheduling. The work is “beginning to show progress,” as evidenced by declining cancellation rates in the WRHA, Asagwara said.

“We continue to monitor the system closely to ensure home-care delivers the reliability Manitobans deserve,” the health minister said.

The WRHA has 1,167 full-time equivalent health-care aides in its home-care program; there’s an 11.7 per cent vacancy rate, down from 16.7 per cent in January 2025.

A new collective agreement for home-care aides could be helping with retention, Schroeder said. The year-old deal sees the home-care workers earning the same wages as their counterparts employed in facilities.

Use of uncertified but trained health-care aides has helped fill gaps, Schroeder continued. Agencies — and higher wages — continue to draw talent.

“We have to actively get away from using agency staff,” she said.

gabrielle.piche@winnipegfreepress.com