Staff photo by Rob Beintema/ Brampton Guardian
The Ontario Health Coalition is using a 10-foot rocking chair as a prop in a 27-community tour to raise awareness about access to long-term care homes and to collect 20,000 signatures to represent the number of people on the wait-list for long-term care in the province. The provincial health coalition is also highlighting care issues and asking that the provincial government set a minimum of four hours of hands-on care per day for every resident in a long-term care centre.
The Brampton Guardian reports, “Annamarie Bohus, a Brampton resident and member of the Peel Poverty Action Group and the Council of Canadians Peel, was the caregiver for her uncle who died two years ago as a result of colon cancer. ‘After my uncle had his colon removed, they had to keep him at Brampton Civic Hospital because there are no chronic care beds. We had to take the first bed available which was in Bolton’, she said. ‘From Brampton to Bolton, there are no buses, so I had to get rides to take him to his treatment once-a-month because if I didn’t, it cost him extra $90. All his money went to the nursing home. He couldn’t even buy shaving cream.'”
The Niagara Falls Review notes, “Fiona McMurran from the local chapter of the Council of Canadians thanks to the efforts of seniors advocates such as Doug Rapelje, chairman of Welland’s senior citizens advisory committee, things are slowly improving in the city. ‘Welland is at last going to get those 96 long term care beds promised by the Ontario government back in 2007’, she said. She also credited Welland Mayor Barry Sharpe for continuing to ‘fight hard’ against plans to sell the licence for a 75-bed Extended Care Unit in Welland. ‘We’re lucky here in Welland. We have some excellent champions, but they need help’, McMurran said.”
Other Council of Canadians chapters in Ontario have also been supporting this tour.
For more about the Giant Rocking Chair Tour, please click here.
