Concerns raised this week by B.C.’s ombudsperson are the latest in a series of red flags about the state of long-term care home visits in this province.
Despite the release last month of policy guidelines around “essential” and “social” visits and a new public health order requiring all long-term care homes to comply, Jay Chalke called on the province to “address outstanding fairness concerns, and to ensure the policy is implemented consistently across all health authorities.”
The nature of his requested changes – mandatory timelines for visit-related decision-making by faculty staff and for each stage of appeal, providing reasons for denial of visits in writing, making basic information about the policy and process accessible to the public – suggests family members and other caregivers are being kept in the dark and frozen out by an unresponsive bureaucracy.
Or as seniors advocate Isobel Mackenzie put it, the concern is that loved ones who have always provided essential care are being treated as “an issue to be managed.”
That was the picture painted last September in a letter signed by 36 Sunshine Coast residents who had loved ones in long-term care. Brian Smith of Halfmoon Bay, who signed the letter first and sent it out to various officials, has continued to actively support other caregivers even though his wife died in care in December.
Contacted this week, he said the situation at the two publicly operated care homes in Sechelt remains grim. “I don’t think that things have improved at all,” he said.
As well as allowing essential visits in end-of-life situations, the provincial policy is supposed to allow care-home residents to have a designated essential visitor – someone whose visits are deemed “paramount to the resident’s physical care and mental well-being,” which could mean providing help with feeding, mobility, personal care or communication.
While the policy sounds good on paper, it often proves to be anything but.
“For caregivers here on the Sunshine Coast,” Mr. Smith said, “I doubt that there are very many who are even aware that there is a process by which they can pursue their concerns and the system certainly makes no effort to provide that information or even to let caregivers know who is responsible for designating ‘essential visitor’ status on the Sunshine Coast.”
Even being designated an essential visitor doesn’t guarantee humane access to a loved one, as Mr. Smith learned with his late wife at Totem Lodge.
Here’s how he tells it:
“I was declared an essential visitor for my wife who wasn’t eating properly. I was allowed to go in five days a week at lunchtime in order to assist with her feeding. Over time this was reduced by the facility to four days, to three days, to two days and then to one day per week. Some essential visitor! I was told that there were other family members who had been given the same status and as there was only one place where this could take place, I had to give up my days.
“After my wife was declared palliative in early December, I was allowed in 24 hours per day until she passed away. I was given four days during which time she was incapable of communicating with me. I had lost nine months with my wife of 50 years.
“In my opinion nothing has changed since our letter went out and the concern and heartbreak continues to this day.”
Heartbreak is the word.
The collateral damage from “keeping us all safe from COVID” continues.
