Family struggles to secure loved one’s release from care home

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 02/12/2020 (1945 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Despite having a bed lined up at another long-term care home, Jeffery Carver’s family is struggling to transfer him out of the site of one of Manitoba’s deadliest COVID-19 outbreaks.

Carver, 58, a former long-haul trucker who is paralyzed except for two fingers, was moved into Parkview Place on July 24, after suffering a heart attack and a stroke.

Since his arrival, Barbara Carver said in an interview Wednesday, her son’s care has been poor, as staff shortages and a widespread COVID-19 outbreak at the Winnipeg facility has often left residents to fend for themselves.

“There’s no one there to be dependent on,” she said. “There’s nobody there really — and the staff that is there doesn’t have time to bother with anybody.”

Jeffery has told her stories of cockroaches and mice in the rooms, long hours without help from nurses or care staff, unaddressed bedsores, and a lack of food options for his dietary needs, she said.

In September, the family secured a bed at Brightwater Senior Living of Tuxedo, but when outbreaks began at both Parkview Place and Brightwater, the family was told Jeffery would need to spend two weeks in quarantine before being able to transfer homes, Carver said.

Parkview Place has been under critical pandemic restrictions since Sept. 16. To date, 29 of its residents have died of COVID-19.

In total, 163 Manitobans have died as a result of COVID-19 in personal care homes; there were 912 active cases in such facilities, as of Wednesday.

The Carver family has been unable to secure a place for Jeffery to isolate and receive proper care, noting home care workers have been “almost impossible” to access as the pandemic rages on.

“He doesn’t know when or if he’ll be able to get out of there,” Carver said.

For Lisa Muswagon, it took over a month of advocating to get her father, Charles Scribe, discharged from Parkview Place.

Scribe had been living at Parkview since March, calling his family often with complaints about long periods of isolation and absent caretakers, she said. On one occasion, Scribe had fallen and was left on the ground for hours before receiving care, she said.

As the pandemic worsened, communication from the care home became severed, Muswagon said, and the family began fighting for 72-year-old Scribe’s discharge.

“Everyday it seemed to get worse and worse,” Muswagon said in an interview Wednesday. “It seemed to me that there were broken systems in there.”

On his release from the care home Monday, Muswagon said her father was rolled out in a broken wheelchair, wearing clothes that weren’t his.

“It’s insulting, it’s shocking,” she said. “It’s just draining mentally. You feel kicked down by this system that’s supposed to help you.”

Muswagon said Scribe, a residential school survivor, has been decompressing from the trauma of what he calls “the hardest experience” of his life.

While the family and a health-care aide help care for Scribe at home, Muswagon said she’s talking to other Parkview resident families — and gearing up to take the fight to the next level.

“It doesn’t stop here. Just because we got him out doesn’t mean it’s all good now, there’s still another battle that has to be faced,” she said.

“I don’t want to blame the health-care workers or the nurses or the doctors. I guess our next step now is to talk to a lawyer.”

A spokesperson for the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority said it continues to process discharge requests throughout care home outbreaks, which are “reviewed with the long-term care program, home care, public health and the family/caregiver to ensure that a community option is a safe option.”

Between March 1 and Nov. 18 — the most recent data available — the region approved 76 discharges back into the community. This is the first year discharge data has been tracked.

Revera Inc., the Ontario-based company that owns Parkview Place, did not respond to Free Press requests for comment.

julia-simone.rutgers@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @jsrutgers