Fixing Long-Term Care
Our seniors deserve high-quality care in well-staffed and safe long-term care facilities. For too long, governments have ignored our aging population, failed to make investments where it mattered; chose not to modernize laws and regulations when it was needed and neglected to train enough staff before it went from bad to worse.
Here’s what we have done so far to fix long-term care in our community:
- Changed the model of inspections to a complaint-based and proactive system;
- Improved training for inspectors and increased the ratio to 1 inspector for every 2 homes;
- Legislated 4 hours of direct care for every resident in Ontario facilities;
- Investing $25 million in Extendicare Peterborough and Lakefield, Fairhaven, Riverview Manor, and St. Joseph’s at Fleming. This funding is permanent and annualized; earmarked for exclusive use to hire hundreds of more nurses, personal support workers, and physiotherapists locally;
- A new, tuition-free personal support worker course at Fleming College which can be completed in 6 months before placement;
- Licenced the construction and refurbishment of almost 1,000 new beds in Peterborough-Kawartha;
- Designed and approved a Centre of Excellence at Trent University, accompanied by the establishment of a 225 bed long-term care facility;
- Strengthened enforcement and penalties for long-term care homes who break the law or neglect resident care;
- Approved the capital to train and hire 27,000 new nurses and personal support workers within the system and;
- Implemented a comprehensive staffing plan to enhance professional development, increase education and training, and improve working conditions for staff in long-term care.
- Legislation to offer permanent wage increases for personal support workers in community and institutional settings.