Ignoring elderly
Sunday February 26, 2006
Budget throws money at shrinking constituency
Two old friends died this week. Their deaths remind me, painfully, that we are all growing older. Indeed, our whole society is growing older.
In a series of articles about Canada’s changing demographics, the National Post’s Anne Marie Owens wrote, “in less than a decade, seniors will outnumber children; in just 15 years, deaths will outnumber births.”
Birthrates are steadily declining. In 1979, the average age of mothers giving birth was 26. By 2003, it was almost 30. Within 50 years, seniors will outnumber children (aged 15 and under) roughly three to one. Owens described this situation, with only slight exaggeration, as “a childless culture.”
Increased immigration is no solution. Indeed, it will exacerbate the imbalance, because it brings in mainly adults already well advanced up the population pyramid.
And therefore I think that the provincial budget announced earlier this week by Finance Minister Carole Taylor missed the boat.
Youth-oriented budget
Carole Taylor (no relation) focused on children and youth in her budget. She allocated $421 million over the next four years to help vulnerable children and families. The new services will increase counselling, provide more social workers, and offer more funding for foster parents and families caring for children under kinship agreements, she said in her budget presentation.
The budget is about “our little ones,” she stated. “We are looking at children in a holistic way.”
Good! It’s high time the Liberal government started undoing some of the damage done by its previous seven budgets. To take just one example, cutting funding for the Children’s Commission, in 2002, left at least 80 investigations unfinished.
Syndicated columnist Paul Willcocks calls Taylor’s budget the “Sherry Charlie budget.” Sherry Charlie was just 19 months old in 2002 when she was beaten to death by her uncle.
Government agencies placed her in her uncle’s home in Port Alberni. She died 22 days after. The uncle, who has admitted responsibility, had a lengthy criminal record that included convictions for violence. Provincial and aboriginal child welfare agencies had approved the move without completing background checks.
Provincial officials have repeatedly denied that government cutbacks had anything to do with Sherry Charlie’s miserable death. Carole Taylor’s budget puts the lie to their assurances.
Elderly ignored
Unfortunately, it fails to recognize – with hard cash – that lots of other people are also dying miserable deaths.
For example, Fanny Albo. Al and Fanny Albo had been married for 70 years. They lived in Rossland, on the slopes of Red Mountain.
At 97, Al hurt his back. He was sent down the hill to the hospital in Trail. Soon after, 91-year-old Fanny also fell and had to go to the same hospital.
The Interior Health Authority (IHA) decreed that Fanny could no longer live on her own. But there were no beds available for her in the West Kootenays, because one of the first acts of the Liberal government, after they were elected in 2001, was to close “redundant” hospitals and nursing homes throughout the area. That meant Fanny had to be shipped off to Grand Forks, an hour’s drive away across a mountain pass noted for its heavy snowfalls.
According to the Albo’s son Jim, the ambulance attendants “wheeled her in… and said, ‘Say goodbye to your husband.’ They never gave my mom and dad a minute together. He wasn’t able to get out of bed, to give her a kiss, or hold her hand, or anything.”
Fanny died in Grand Forks two days later, “by herself, with nobody around.”
Recurring patterns of neglect
I have not had much personal experience with Interior Health’s care of seniors – and I devoutly hope I never do – but their inhumane handling of Al and Fanny Albo seems far from an exception.
Almost a carbon copy happened in Vernon. Barbara and William Haymond had moved together into a seniors’ care complex. But Interior Health told William Haymond he was "too well" to continue living with his wife. He didn’t need the same level of care as she did. He had to move out, leaving behind his wife of over 50 years.
Only after extensive media publicity did Interior Health reverse its ruling.
Similarly, my wife’s aunt was given 24 hours to move from Creston, where she had lived for 80 years, to Golden, five hours away, where she knew no one. Later, when a room became available in Creston, health officials arbitrarily changed the date the elderly woman must move, without ever asking her or her family about feasibility.
I know a few people who work in IHA facilities. I admire them. I’ve been a patient in two IHA hospitals myself. I have no criticisms the quality of care provided by medical staff.
But their administrative procedures must have been borrowed from Air Canada. They treat the elderly like baggage, to be handled with the least possible inconvenience to the system.
Broken promises
Meanwhile, Carol Taylor’s budget flings money at youth and young people. In addition to the $421 million for family and children’s service, she plans to spend $3.4 billion on schools, colleges, and universities, another $400 million on job training programs, and a $112 million increase for education generally.
Seniors – at least, those able to remain in their own homes – will get a munificent $100 a year more as a homeowner’s grant. Whoopee.
Politically, Carole Taylor’s budget aims at a steadily decreasing segment of voters – youth and young parents—and ignores the most rapidly growing segment.
Craig Meredith, executive director of Federation of Child and Family Services of B.C., said that child and family organizations believe the budget means the government is finally getting serious about children’s issues.
When the Liberals were elected in 2001 they pledged to build 5,000 beds for seniors care. Recently, B.C.’s Health Minister George Abbott admitted that only 607 have been provided.
Let us hope that the promises to children and families do not fall equally far short.
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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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