GUELPH - MPP Mike Schreiner thinks we have a “crisis of caring” and the government needs to spend money on caring for people appropriately.
Schreiner hosted a town hall recently at Royal City Mission as an opportunity to hear from constituents. Their questions, concerns and what is top of mind were shared by some audience members out of 15 at the town hall.
Topics like housing, healthcare and homelessness came up.
Joe Evers is a dad to a 28 year-old son with a developmental disability and Evers is also a volunteer and secretary treasurer of Community Living Guelph Wellington. He said the developmental disability services sector is in crisis.
Community Living has received a seven per cent funding increase over the last 30 years and over those years we had 60 per cent inflation, said Evers. Community Living has had to cut staff, training and building repairs and the Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services (MCCSS) said to keep cutting and we can’t cut anymore, he said.
This year Community Living is facing a $3 million deficit and MCSS stated it can no longer support 100 per cent of Community Living’s support costs which means 900 people it serves, and their families will face cuts and uncertainty, Evers continued. He asked Schreiner how he can challenge the government to look beyond priorities like highways and housing and invest the appropriate funds for thousands who need dedicated support.
Schreiner said his heart is with everyone who has children and loved ones who have developmental disabilities and how they are going to be cared for. He told the audience an example of a woman who came to his office who was questioning if she would have to commit suicide for her adult son to receive the services he deserves.
“And so you know me, I oftentimes talk about the climate crisis, but I think we have a deeper crisis in Ontario right now, and it's a crisis of care,” said Schreiner. “It's a crisis of a government that actually cares about people most vulnerable in our communities.”
He mentioned the Ontario Disability Support Program, people living in tents, healthcare workers, developmental service workers. Schreiner thinks the public should be informed of the “crisis of caring” that people are facing and how its affecting the day-to-day lives of the most vulnerable.
“And one of the things that is really frustrating for me is because we're under funding our systems of care so much, it actually means we're spending money on the wrong things,” he said. Spending it on things like policing and emergency departments. “We’re spending it on Band-Aid solutions that if we actually just spent the money on caring for people appropriately and compassionately and with empathy, we would actually save money.”
Shirley Szilvasy has been a therapist for nearly 35 years and she asked Schreiner what the province is doing to retain nurses and healthcare staff across the board who are in disciplines like home care. From what Szilvasy understands the average retiring age for nurses is 36-years-old and that they are leaving the profession.
She knows what doesn’t retain nurses is burnout and asking one nurse to do the work of three. “Nobody wants that. You're going to burn them out. You're burning out people in home care. The amount of work we do on our own time, not paid, because we want to help people. But if you're not going to do anything to help the staff and draw people to those areas, you're not going to have them, because the nurse can make more in the hospital then they can in home care. So where are they going to go? They're going to go to the hospital,” she said.
Szilvasy believes home care, where people get the care they need in their own homes, is a viable option and is cheaper.
“To me, the simple answer for retaining staff is to pay people fair wages with fair benefits and better working conditions,” said Schreiner.
He referenced Bill 124 which limited salary increases to one per cent per increase per year for public sector workers and how the bill has been deemed unconstitutional. He also said the government spent $4.3 million “in legal fees trying to battle healthcare workers getting a raise.”
“We need wage parity, because the work you do in home care is just as important as the work as somebody does in hospital. Maybe even more important,” said Schreiner.
At hospitals and long-term care homes, portions of money is going into hiring private agency nurses. The money could be better spent on permanent staff, he said.
“You have a higher quality of patient care when you have consistency in the people who care for you,” said Schreiner.
The biggest issue right now is “the housing crisis, and especially people experiencing homelessness, is a true tragedy, and it's happening everywhere,” he said. This issue was brought up by a couple of people in the audience throughout the night.
Schreiner said he’s been having conversations with the County of Wellington which provides housing, about its winter housing plan. “I'm cautiously optimistic that we're going to see some additional solutions implemented that will move people out of tents and into housing,” he said.
He also mentioned the closure of consumption and treatment sites in the province. He said there isn’t enough mental health care and addiction treatment services.
“And so again, in the same way, we're under funding developmental services, we're under funding mental healthcare and addictions treatment. The wait time to get into Stonehenge, which is an incredibly successful therapeutic community right here in our community, and the fact that we grossly under pay the staff that works there, so they have huge staff turnover, to me is a sign that do we really care as a society? And if we're not going to have government invest in our systems of care, I think we're going to continue to see individuals having declining quality of life, that the whole community has a declining quality of life,” said Shreiner.