Sunday July 3, 2005
Seniors suffer while institutions prosper
Last Sunday, two women came to our church in Winfield to talk about their experiences volunteering at a Romanian orphanage.
Lorraine Thompson and Betty Chenowyth, both of Vernon, spent three months in Romania working with infants.
Under dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, Romania became the most backward nation in continental Europe. While Ceausescu squandered money on megaprojects, the country sank into what Romania\’s own Ministry of Public Information now calls “a personality cult that bordered on mental illness” resulting in “distortions in the economy, the degradation of the social and moral life, the country\’s isolation from the international community.”
The most basic foods — bread, eggs, flour, oil, salt, sugar, beef and potatoes — were rationed. By the mid-1980s meat was available only on the black market.
The hardships produced massive numbers of orphans, perhaps the most in the developed world. After Ceausescu\’s overthrow in 1989, when western media were once again permitted to visit the country, our world was horrified at the conditions in Romanian orphanages.
Romania had an estimated 100,000 orphans, warehoused in massive dormitories. The pictures of these orphanages resembled the Nazi death camps – although the orphanages were at least intended to preserve life, not terminate it. But the same faces stared back at the cameras: emaciated bodies; haunted eyes, listless attitudes…
Lack of compassion
Physically, things have improved since then. The current government of Romania is legislating large orphanages out of existence. Some still remain, though. Lorraine and Betty visited one orphanage that contained 700 children. But more of the orphans live in smaller institutions now. A few fortunate children live in foster homes in groups of twelve or less.
But the apathetic attitudes persist, the lack of concern, the sense that this is just another job to be done with as little personal inconvenience as possible.
Lorraine and Betty saw infants strapped to toilets for six hours at a stretch, to avoid the cost and fuss of changing soiled diapers. A 16-year-old girl, who scratches herself until she bleeds, has spent her life with her arms usually tied behind her back. A difficult boy was lashed to his crib, with ropes too short to let him sit on the floor.
In one room, staff ignored the toddlers in their care while they smoked cigarettes and chatted at the other end of the room.
Like the Pharisee who prayed, “Lord, I thank you that I am not like that miserable sinner over there…” I was tempted to congratulate Canada for being much more humane, more compassionate than the Romanians.
Different victims
No, we don\’t treat children that badly. Not any more, at least. We save that kind of treatment for our elderly, instead.
(If this is starting to sound perilously like a repeat of last week\’s column, I apologize. But double standards always offend me.)
We used to treat children that way. For a century, Canada effectively orphaned thousands of native children. We incarcerated them in residential schools, to educate them and to inculcate European standards. Their standard of living was often only marginally better than that of Romanian orphans.
Today, however, we have shifted physical and emotional neglect onto our senior citizens.
In extreme cases, staff strap elderly patients into their beds. Or belt them onto commodes. Staff ignore seniors\’ needs while they handle paperwork and administrivia. Kitchens provide tasteless pre-packaged meals in plastic pouches that arthritic fingers cannot open.
As just one example, consider the Salvation Army\’s Sunset Lodge in Esquimalt, a suburb of Victoria.
Two years ago, the Salvation Army shredded its contract with members of the Hospital Employees Union, and contracted out housekeeping and patient care responsibilities to the Compass Group, a British multinational.
In August, 2003, fifty long-term employees lost their jobs. They were told they could re-apply for their old jobs, at about half their former pay.
Profits over people
It\’s a kind of management mantra today that you have to pay enough to attract the best people. The mantra apparently applies only to executives. The Regional District of Central Okanagan recently gave its management team sizeable raises. Immediately after Gordon Campbell\’s Liberal party was elected in 2001, it increased deputy ministers\’ salaries. When a bankrupt Air Canada asked its unions take a 22 per cent pay cut, it rejected any suggestion that management should take a similar cut.
Sunset Lodge\’s Executive Director, Blake Mooney, kept his job. And his salary.
Presumably, Sunset didn\’t need to have the “best people” on the staff who cared for patients.
The effects of this policy showed up almost immediately.
Relatives protested about filthy floors, neglect, inedible meals, urine odours, shortages of towels, laundry three weeks overdue…
Similar complaints have been made about Victoria\’s General and Jubilee Hospitals, where food and cleaning services were also contracted to – guess who – Compass and its affiliates.
The Vancouver Island Health Authority gave Sunset Lodge a “high hazard” rating for its lack of cleanliness and patient care.
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But Sunset Lodge is far from an exception. The VIHA gave ten other seniors\’ facilities a similar rating. (One, Beacon Hill Villa, was cited 14 times in ten months.) Nine of those institutions had contracted out their services.
That\’s not all. An independent audit of B.C.\’s six regional health authorities found that one in four facilities failed to measure up to acceptable standards. In the Fraser Valley and Vancouver Island, more than half failed.
Only two regions got high marks. Is it just coincidence that neither had contracted services out?
For the rest, saving money on wages apparently mattered more than caring for patients.
Last week, the Salvation Army fired Compass. It has not, however, even hinted that it might have made a mistake. Institutions don\’t admit such things. It took the Red Cross 20 years to apologize for mismanaging blood supplies – and they only did it as a plea bargain to avoid criminal charges.
In Romania, institutions protect themselves, and children suffer. In Canada, the institutionalized elderly do.
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Copyright © 2002 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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