It’s still not clear how last week’s announcement that the province is going to spend $500 million over the next four years to improve care for seniors will be reflected locally.
The future of long-term care on the Sunshine Coast has been a subject of vigorous debate since Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) announced last June that it was planning to close Shorncliffe and Totem Lodge in August 2018 and purchase 128 beds in a privately run facility to be built in Sechelt by Trellis Seniors Services.
According to the Ministry of Health, “year-over-year funding increases from the Ministry of Health will enable each health authority to reach a consistent average of 3.36 direct-care hours per resident day across both publicly administered and contracted residential care facilities.” That means hiring about 1,500 new workers, including health-care assistants, nurses, occupational therapists, and physiotherapists.
A report released by B.C.’s Seniors Advocate earlier this year showed that none of the long-term care facilities on the Sunshine Coast is meeting the ministry guidelines. Shorncliffe and Totem Lodge in Sechelt provide 3.14 and 3.29 hours per day, Christenson Village, a private non-profit in Gibsons run by the Good Samaritan Society, provides 3.18. The minimum set out in the agreement between Trellis and VCH is 3.05 hours.
VCH is still working out how the newly announced funding will flow to its various facilities.
“We are going to have to identify what is required in terms of staffing across VCH to lift the direct care hours to the target identified by [Health] Minister [Terry] Lake,” said VCH’s Anna Marie D’Angelo in an email to Coast Reporter. “Because many of our sites and those of our contract providers have different staffing levels and complexity of residents, each will potentially be different. As a result of the funding announcement, which we see as good news for seniors, we will work on confirming what we need and where to meet the government target.”
The Hospital Employees Union (HEU), which represents the majority of workers at both the public and private facilities on the Sunshine Coast, welcomed the province’s announcement, but also called for greater accountability for how the money is spent.
“Mechanisms are needed to ensure funding goes to care, and [is] not diverted to profits or administration,” said HEU secretary-business manager Jennifer Whiteside. “We need action to end repeated contracting out – a practice that displaces entire care teams and disrupts the continuity of care for seniors.”
