Abuse reports warrant urgency

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 15/11/2021 (1172 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Deadly COVID-19 outbreaks at Manitoba’s personal care homes exposed the system’s deficiencies in the most tragic of ways.

That sadness transforms into anger and disappointment after a Free Press report revealed the province’s Protection for Persons in Care Office has only 10 people to investigate an average of 2,500 reports of possible abuse every year at Manitoba’s health-care facilities.

The office received 2,282 reports in the fiscal year that ended March 2021, the lowest number of cases reported in the past three years. Still, the reports pile up.

Most of the complaints come from personal care homes, and the case backlog has became a chronic problem long before the pandemic swept through many residences and preyed upon many of Manitoba’s most vulnerable.

The Protection for Persons in Care Office is part of Manitoba Health, and care-home operators say it can take years before the office investigates claims of abuse, which include hygiene concerns, bullying or assaults and theft, although criminal matters are reported to the police.

The Manitoba Association of Residential and Community Care Homes for the Elderly says many cases have gone unresolved so long that the care-home resident who made the complaint died before the matter was addressed. In other cases, staff employees involved have moved or left the care-home industry altogether.

The situation has become so dire that Manitoba’s auditor general decided in October it would investigate how the Protection for Persons in Care Office handles these concerns as well as the level of care in Manitoba’s personal care homes.

Moving a loved one into a personal care home is often the most agonizing decision a family can make. Some people can’t understand why they’re being uprooted from where they’ve lived for years and taken to a strange place. Others dispute the need to move into care, causing family rifts that are difficult to heal.

COVID-19 fears have added to that reluctance. While vaccines and vigilance by staff members to prevent the spread of the virus has made residential care safer, memories of the 56 residents at the Maples Personal Care Home who died during an outbreak between October 2020 and January 2021 linger.

Seeing how long it takes for the province to address reports of mistreatment will only make it more difficult to convince family members that living in a personal care home is in their best interest.

It shouldn’t have taken an auditor general’s probe for the provincial government to provide better service for those who live in personal care homes, many of whom spend thousands of dollars a month for the care they receive.

Hiring more staff to address cases of abuse should help speed up the investigations and lower the level of frustration residents and their families have felt.

Some have pushed for a provincial seniors’ advocate, such as Shelly Glover, the former Progressive Conservative leadership candidate, and NDP MLA Uzoma Asagwara. Seniors make up the majority of personal care home residents, and their interests deserve respect, action and a government watchdog to act on their behalf.

We all deserve the right to live in dignity, and the province can show it respects that right for those who live in personal care homes by investigating their reports of abuse with a greater sense of urgency.