A seniors advocate’s role

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 02/03/2024 (918 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

During the last election campaign, seniors across Manitoba appreciated the current premier, Wab Kinew, signing a pledge to enact legislation for a seniors advocate within the first 180 days of being elected to office, or by April 3, 2024.

Key commitments outlined in this pledge included that a provincial seniors advocate would be enshrined in legislation.

That they would be independent — reporting to the legislative assembly rather than the government, similar to the role of the Manitoba Advocate for Children and Youth. That their role would be developed in consultation with community-based groups. That they would be engaged in addressing issues with an equity-based lens for Indigenous, racialized, LGBTTQ+, and persons with disabilities communities, and focused on issues of older adults living both in-care and in the community.

Important issues that a seniors advocate office would address involve health care, personal care homes, aging in place, home care, transportation, culturally appropriate services, housing — including unhoused older adults — and income support.

The new provincial government is to be commended for further prioritizing its support for seniors in its first speech from the throne. “Our government will never forget the way seniors were neglected in the pandemic. We will not let this happen again… and we will create a Seniors Advocate — a strong, independent voice for seniors and families.”

A Seniors Advocacy Coalition is being developed that will fuse issue-based community organizing with legal advocacy to improve programs and policies that address the well-being of older adults in Manitoba. A focus will be on building a voice for seniors within Indigenous, racialized, LGBTTQ+, low-income, and persons with disabilities communities.

The coalition has recently consulted with the Office of the Seniors Advocate in British Columbia, one of the few provinces in Canada that has a seniors advocate, to better understand the lessons learned from their experience.

The B.C. Seniors Advocate supports the idea of providing the seniors advocate’s role with enhanced investigatory powers, like the ability to subpoena witnesses and documents, compel testimony, and enforceable court orders. Such powers would help the advocate obtain information necessary to conduct investigations or establish inquiries into both individual and institutional issues that impact the well-being of older adults. Presently, the B.C. Seniors Advocate does not have these investigatory powers and have identified this as a shortcoming.

Our Manitoba government should broaden the definition of abuse for older adults to include the concept of organizational and institutional abuse. This would empower a seniors advocate to be proactive, rather than just reacting to individual incidents of elder abuse.

Recently, the provincial government amended regulations to the definition of abuse within the Protection for Persons in Care Act. The definition has been changed and expanded to include various forms of physical force, sexual abuse as well as a range of intentionally caused emotional or psychological harms.

However, this definition is too narrow, as it pertains to persons living in-care and not older adults living in the community. Moreover, extending beyond individual incidents of in-care forms of abuse requires attention to institutional abuse, structural violence, and corporate neglect.

These forms of abuse are often ignored because we are sensitized to see harm perpetrated by individuals and not the abusive role played by organizations. When we do not venture beyond assigning responsibility to the individual, we hide the institutional context that brings about abusive conditions and practices.

Indeed, definitions of institutional elder abuse have helped illuminate how funding, business models, short-staffing, ageism, failings in relation to organizational culture, staff recruitment, training or supervision, and ineffective management can contribute to an abusive organizational environment, even if individuals within the organization are not themselves ill-intentioned. This broader conceptualization would help address forms of abuse that are embedded in organizational policies and practices of service providers for older adults both in-care and within the community.

Manitobans want to ensure that seniors in our province have the quality of care and services they deserve. Establishing a provincial seniors advocate would be an important step towards holding governments, institutions and service providers accountable to the public. The time for action is now.

Lucille Bruce and Tom Simms are members of the Seniors Advocacy Coalition.