Long-term care workers and their representatives say many problems are getting worse in Ontario, despite government promises to fix things.
Five years after the COVID-19 pandemic shone a harsh spotlight on critical gaps in long-term, workers and their representatives say many problems are getting worse in Ontario, despite government promises to fix things.
On Tuesday, a representative of CUPE workers at an Ottawa long-term care home described chronic staff shortages, rising stress and an inability to retain many workers because of the pay and conditions.
Although health care has been in the spotlight, long-term care has largely flown under the radar during the provincial election campaign.
Ian Rayment, a registered practical nurse and president of CUPE Local 2770 at Extendicare Laurier Manor, said promises to make improvements in long-term care have not been met and the issue has gotten little traction during the campaign. Rayment urged people to think about long-term care before they vote this week.
“Doug Ford and his government have failed vulnerable long-term care residents and the care staff who support them and their families. There is no meaningful workforce strategy to deal with staffing shortages and attracting and retaining new front-line care staff to make care better,” said Rayment. “It is clear to those of us who work in long-term care that improving residents’ wellbeing by ensuring adequate staffing levels isn’t even on their radar.”
During the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, long-term care residents accounted for three per cent of all COVID-19 cases and 43 per cent of COVID-19 deaths. Ontario brought members of the military to help with some of the hardest-hit homes during the first severe wave of the pandemic.
Evening Update
The PC government made significant promises aimed at improving long-term care in Ontario. Among them was to build 30,000 new beds by 2028. Rayment noted that only a fraction of those beds are in place. “At the rate they are going, it will take 125 years to add that many beds.”
As a result, wait times to get in to long-term care have continued to surge in recent years.
Over the past decade, waiting lists for long-term care in Ontario have doubled, according to the Ontario Long Term Care Association. This year, there are expected to be 50,000 people waiting for long-term care beds across the province, according to the association.
In Ottawa, the waits are even longer, according to Health Quality Ontario. Demand for long-term care is expected to grow by an average of 38 per cent in Ontario over the next decade. In the Ottawa and Eastern Ontario region, the demand for long-term care is expected to be 43 per cent. Currently, people are waiting 246 days to get a long-term care bed in the Champlain region, which includes Ottawa.
The Ontario government also promised a minimum of four hours of direct care for long-term care residents. The government has missed some of its interim targets along the way. As of last fall, the province said it has provided more than an hour of additional direct care to LTC residents — a 33 per cent increase in direct care since 2021.
A spokesperson for the Ontario PC campaign argued the PC government has done significantly more to improve long-term care than the previous Liberal government.
Rayment said hiring staff is one thing, but maintaining staff at the home where he works is an ongoing challenge, with many new workers leaving before they pass probation. He blamed that, in part, on low pay for the work required, high stress and glitches in the pay system used by Extendicare, which means there has been little stability in pay cheques.
Rayment said that difficulty retaining workers will become a crisis as demand continues to grow.
Long-term care workers represented by CUPE are calling for the provincial standard of care to be increased to four hours per long-term care resident; a quicker increase in bed capacity; more full-time work in long-term care; and pay increases to retain full-time workers.
A spokesperson for the Ontario PC party campaign said the Ontario Progressive Conservative government is on track to build “nearly 60,000 new and upgraded long-term care beds by 2028.”
The PC campaign also noted the government passed the Fixing Long-Term Care Act to ensure residents received four hours of daily direct care. It also invested $4.9 billion to train and hire 27,000 staff, doubled the number of inspectors and increased fines for offences.
