“Hell no, we won’t go” could be the rallying cry of an increasing number of ailing seniors fighting to stay in their homes.
Most health-care workers, government officials and agencies who work with seniors agree that the challenge is to find ways to accommodate those demands.
Kerry Towle, Alberta MLA for Innisfail-Sylvan Lake, is trying to keep her father, who suffered a stroke in 2011, close to his family. She would like to move him into a house on her 30-acre property, but servicing and upgrading the building could cost $80,000.
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“Our family doesn’t have that,” she said.
Towle said there are a number of obstacles, regulations and barriers to creating such housing for rural seniors when instead government should be supporting options that help keep them at home.
“We need to make it as easy as possible,” she said.
Her Wildrose party would like to see government compensate extended families for providing palliative care and remove rules that cover some drug costs only for those in long-term care facilities.
She said more money is also needed for supports such as home care and transportation for seniors who are no longer driving. Some rural communities do not have access to Meals on Wheels or home care, she added.
“If we don’t offer it, we’re forcing people to leave their communities,” she said.
Towle cited the push in Elnora, Alta., to use the community’s former hospital as a higher care home.
A private compassionate care home in Red Deer accommodates nine clients at varying levels of care in a family-like setting.
It’s a model that could also be used in the public sector through building incentives programs, she said.
“We need to think outside the box.”
David Marit, president of the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities, said new funding models are needed to create affordable housing units for seniors at different levels of care.
“We know economies of scale works and can generate revenue,” he said.
There are also many regulations in place that make building and maintaining care facilities challenging from sprinkler systems to having registered nurses on staff.
He said not enough Level 3 and 4 care is available for those needing to advance from Level 1 and 2 care, which mean many remain and overload the lower level care units.
He suggested co-operative efforts between municipalities and innovative building solutions that could use pension funds, RRSPs, tax breaks and construction levies.
“We have to find ways we can do something different,” said Marit.
“At the end of the day, these are the people who built the community and they don’t want to move.”
Keeping seniors in their communities is the goal of a pilot project in Saskatchewan’s Regina-Qu’Appelle health region, said Dawn McNeil, the region’s executive director of home care and palliative care.
“People sometimes move be-cause they don’t have a choice,” she said.
The Home First Quick Re-sponse Home Care initiative will identify seniors at emergency rooms who need more care to help them return to and remain in their communities.
The aim of the project is to help reduce hospital admissions, move patients through hospitals more quickly and respond to crises in the community.
“It’s a big shift in everybody’s thinking.”
The program will provide greater amounts of home care support and more immediate short-term help to stabilize them in their own homes in the hopes of deferring placement in long-term care.
Enhanced care would include bathing and dressing, nursing care, support for caregivers, increased access to home care nurses, occupational therapists, case managers, pharmacists, continuing care aids, acute care, quick response and convalescent beds.
“We’re trying to tailor services to be more responsive,” said McNeil.
Eligible seniors will meet several of the following criteria: living alone, walking with difficulty, frequent ER visits and taking five or more medications with no doctor in their community.
McNeil said finding ways to help them return home will also allow time to manage future health crises.
“It will help them make those decisions from home instead of in the middle of an acute care episode,” she said.
The pilot project will be evaluated in two Regina hospitals over the next two years, and if successful, could be rolled out across Saskatchewan.
Holly Schick, executive director of the Saskatchewan Seniors Mechanism, an umbrella group for seniors associations in the province, said the overwhelming consensus from seniors is their desire to stay at home.
That means finding ways to modify physical structures and offer affordable, accessible housing and access to home care and other supports.
“Housing is one piece of a bigger picture,” said Schick, stressing the need for increased awareness of these growing needs as the numbers of seniors grow.
At a recent Summit on Seniors Housing in Weyburn, Sask., speakers and delegates discussed accessible, age friendly communities with good lighting and sidewalks, good snow removal and accessible programming where seniors are able to stay involved.
“People need not to be able to be just surviving but want a good quality of life,” Schick said.
As the population of seniors increases, so too will the volume of issues and needs, she added.
“We believe people want to stay in their own home as long as possible, so we have to provide support.”
