Health Care Union Calls
for Immediate Action to Address
Staffing Needs in Long-Term Care Facilities
SIEU health care workers picket outside Scarborough Veterans'
care
facility, November 8, 2018.
The Service Employees International Union (SEIU),
which
represents 24,000 front-line staff in long-term care (LTC)
facilities across Ontario has issued another urgent appeal for
the
government to address under-staffing issues to meet the health
and
safety needs of residents and staff alike. The appeal was issued
by
SEIU Health Care
President Sharleen Stewart on February 1, the same day that
the
CBC published an exposé of conditions in LTC facilities in
Ontario.
SEIU Health Care President Sharleen Stewart's
statement
read: "As the union that represents the most long-term care
workers in
Ontario, the under-staffing and health and safety issues
highlighted by
today's CBC Marketplace story are unfortunately all too familiar
to us.
We have been speaking out and ringing alarm bells on these issues
for
over a decade. Under-staffing has now become an epidemic in LTC
facilities across the province and we continue to demand
immediate
solutions to this crisis. We are urging the Ontario government to
work
with us and the more than 24,000 frontline LTC staff we
represent,
to establish a mandatory minimum hours of direct care for
residents and additional funding to allow long-term care
facilities to
be staffed sufficiently. Until these changes happen, the health
and
safety of residents and staff in long-term care facilities will
continue to be at serious risk."
 The CBC report was
based on
evidence gathered by an undercover reporter using a hidden camera
while
working as a volunteer, to document conditions for residents and
staff
at Markhaven Home for Seniors in Markham. This particular
institution
ranks in the median range in terms of reported incidents
involving
residents at a long term care
facility in Ontario. This institution however was brought into
the
spotlight following the death of an 84-year-old resident
in 2017. Both the Ministry and the institution stonewalled
family
requests for an account of what happened but because family
members had
secretly installed a camera to monitor the care provided, it was
impossible
for the Ministry and the institution to dismiss the legitimate
concerns
about the quality of care being provided.
Chronic under-staffing was immediately apparent
to the
CBC reporter, who noted that the home relied heavily on high
school
student volunteers putting in their 40 hours of community
service
that high schools require as a condition of graduation.
Under-staffing
was exacting a heavy toll on staff who skipped lunches and breaks
in
order
to tend to residents, yet were still demoralized by not being
able to
adequately meet the needs of residents whose basic sanitary
needs, for
example, could not be routinely met due to under-staffing. The
SEIU
equates under-staffing as systemic abuse of the patients.
There are no guidelines in Ontario mandating the
number
of hours of direct care that residents of long term care
facilities are
to receive. They were scrapped back in 1996 by the Mike
Harris
Conservatives and never replaced.
This article was published in
Number 4 - February 7, 2019
Article Link:
Health Care Union Calls
for Immediate Action to Address
Staffing Needs in Long-Term Care Facilities
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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