Re:Words won't solve crisis
in elder care, Letters, Nov. 27
The letters by Ellen Watson and Janis Jaffe-White are right on when they discuss the need for provincial funding to be directed to in-home care and alternative residential services in the community rather than more long-term care beds.
Over three decades the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care has been unable to ensure safe, adequate care in these facilities. Arguments have raged on about funding, but the fact is that institutions that warehouse age and disability are the real problems. The routinization and dehumanization of institutional life are what make these facilities unbearable for most residents and those who care about them.
We can do better, and that involves choice, not a dreaded old age spent in an institution. The government's Aging At Home Strategy is a good beginning, but the continuing belief that we need to warehouse people needs to disappear from our mindset and policy landscape to be replaced with service approaches that empower and support people wherever they want to live.
Patricia Spindel, Toronto
