Concerns are being raised about whether long-term care homes are doing enough to protect seniors after the death of an elderly resident in Quebec who wandered outside her home.
The same incident has happened in Ontario before and calls are being renewed to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Emily Hladkowicz’s grandfather Heinz lived in an Ontario long-term care home in Ottawa when he wandered out a door that had been propped open at the facility.
“It was his passion, his joy, he loved walking … all he wanted to do was go for a walk.” And he was punished for it.
“He was immediately put into a locked unit … They called him exit-seeking, it was his fault and that really scared him. He was now on a locked floor in a different room,” said Hladkowicz
Hladkowicz tells CityNews this could have been prevented if proper measures had been in place, but wandering remains a major issue in Ontario long-term care homes and could pose a serious risk to vulnerable residents especially those living with dementia.
“In this weather, extreme weather on both sides, is when we start to see deaths,” explained Vivian Stamatopoulous, an associate teaching professor at Ontario Tech University.
That’s what happened earlier this month when two women in their 80s were pronounced dead after being exposed to extreme temperatures when wandering out of their Quebec homes.
One of them, 88-year-old Jeanne Demers-Goyer, was discovered outside a private seniors’ residence on Promenade des Îles in Laval’s Chomedey district.
It has reignited calls for better safety measures across the country.
“We still have many reports, hundreds of reports, of this happening in Ontario as well but we only hear about it once it reaches the news because of a spectacular incident and a horrifying death like this,” said Stamatopoulous.
In 2023, a senior died from the cold outside an assisted living facility in Oshawa after she was inadvertently locked out of the building.
Sienna Senior Living, which owns the long-term care home, tells CityNews following this death, they initiated a “full independent review of measures, policies and processes within the residence to safeguard residents, and upon receiving the report, took steps to reinforce where appropriate.”
Three of its employees have since been charged with criminal negligence causing death.
Stamatopoulous is calling for the Ford government to mandate staff to resident ratios.
“I would like to see [that] at all homes that are clearly engaging in negligent practices, which are resulting in these deaths, these horrifying deaths.”
“A lot of this is consistently linked to short staffing. If you don’t have enough staff, they can’t detect when a resident is missing and they can’t appropriately and more speedily respond to the alarm system that is indicating that indeed a door has been opened that shouldn’t have been opened,” said Stamatopoulous.
It would be a similar system to the mandates in child care facilities.
“Imagine if this was happening in daycares. Imagine if children were being lost and dying to exposure in these daycares, there would be a massive uproar,” Stamatopoulous. “Frankly with this government, I don’t believe it will ever happen.”
In statement, the Ministry for Seniors and Accessibility said, “Our government continues to significant improvements to protect residents, including a legislated target for homes to provide an average of four hours of direct care per resident per day, increasing annual funding for long-term care staffing to a record $1.92 billion, doubling the number of home inspectors.”
