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


    

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