Hats off to Long-Term Care Minister, Rod Phillips, and the Ontario Government for providing funding to hire more than 4000 new staff in long-term care (LTC) homes! This concrete step will help move the yardsticks towards increasing direct care hours for residents to an average of four hours/day. All residents in Ontario LTC Homes will benefit from this news.
This is a first step towards transforming our LTC home system and one which demonstrates that the Ontario government recognizes and values the care that staff provide. However, staff recruitment for LTC homes is becoming an issue. A strategy to help mitigate this crisis is to create LTC homes where staff want to work and residents want to live!
Let’s hope the government will build on this first step of increasing staffing by looking at how care is delivered. There are emotion-based models of care in existence which have shown how to use the funded hours of direct care most effectively resulting in residents who enjoy a quality of life and staff who enjoy working with those who live in the LTC homes.
We urge you to do your part to bring an emotion-based model of care to long-term care homes in Ontario. Write to your MPP or to your City Councillor, or write a letter to the editor, or any other action that you think will help to promote a quality, dignified life for our seniors living in long-term care homes.
If we don’t speak up for our seniors who will?