Local health advocates are calling on the province to do more to protect seniors in long-term care facilities.
Shirley Roebuck with the local branch of the Ontario Health Coalition says there are chronic problems in the long term care industry.
“This includes violence resident upon staff and resident on resident. There are chronic problems with short staffing and chronic problems not enough education with workers on how to deal with extremely complicated kinds of patients entering nursing homes presently,” notes Roebuck. “We have to tell the government to make sure that new nursing home beds go to municipality and municipal run homes, not towards for profit nursing homes. When a provincial government or municipality runs nursing homes there tends to be slightly better care levels and we don’t think profit should be tied in any way to care for our elderly.”
A rally is being held in Point Edward on Thursday, coinciding with the Ford government’s public hearing for the standing committee for finance and economic development.
