Editor: It is terrible, given the havoc of COVID-19 in our long-term care homes, but Ontario’s government has done little to address the chronic short-staffing and care shortages.
This staffing crisis exists in all of our communities. There is information that a second wave of COVID-19 is beginning with numbers of COVID-19 cases increasing in Europe, Ontario and across Canada.
Even before COVID-19, across Ontario, long-term care homes were painfully short-staffed every shift, every day. Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Now the staffing shortage is a full-blown emergency.
The numbers are shocking. More than 5,500 residents and almost 3,000 staff have been infected by COVID-19 in Ontario’s long-term care homes. Tragically, almost 2,000 residents and staff have died. Many died alone, without enough care, without staff time for emotional support.
Long-term care staff have had to fight for access to appropriate PPE and have worked in crisis-level staffing shortages that have only become worse during the pandemic. In Canada, we have seen the highest levels of death in long-term care homes in the developed world. We cannot allow this to continue.
Despite repeated assurances from Doug Ford, the Ford government has taken no action to deal with emergency staffing shortages and inadequate care levels in long-term care homes. No measures have been taken to get care levels up to a safe standard.
We are calling on Premier Doug Ford to take immediate measures to fix the workforce by improving wages, ensuring staff who want full-time hours are paid for full-time hours, to implement a minimum care standard of four hours of hands-on care per resident per day, to stop the private, for-profit LTC industry from expanding further and to make long-term homes safe so that people can be recruited to work in them.
Our message is clear: Care for our loved ones cannot happen without enough staff to provide it.
There is no excuse for further delay. The conditions of work are the conditions of care.
Please call or e-mail Premier Ford and your local MPP and let them know this crisis must be addressed now.
Shirley Roebuck
Chair
Chatham-Kent Health Coalition
