Letters

Long-term care needs support

March 16, 2016

To the Editor,

I have never written a letter to the paper before, but I feel so strongly about an intolerable situation that exists in our community that I felt compelled to make more people aware of it. We are so fortunate that we have a local facility that can accommodate our loved ones who can no longer look after themselves, but our government has cut back support so much that our relatives and friends are now subjected to dangerous conditions.
My mother-in-law is in Cheddar at the Manor in the final stages of Alzheimer’s disease and is totally helpless. On too many occasions when visiting, we have discovered other residents in her room.
Her bones are very brittle at this point, and, when these residents even climb on her bed, it is a definite danger to her. I cannot stress enough that it is not the fault of the staff working there, who are already supremely over-worked! The fault lays with our government, who gives away billions of dollars in foreign aid and lets our seniors, who have contributed hugely to this country all of their lives, be at risk because of the government’s lack of support to our hospitals and long-term care facilities! Our nurses and other support workers need our support and certainly our loved ones deserve better care than they are able to receive in these current conditions.
I beseech you to call your members of parliament and do everything in our power to force them to right this terrible wrong! Unfortunately, we are too far away from an election to make our opinions known at the polls! This situation is too critical to wait for the next election to hopefully correct the tremendous cutbacks that have transpired. For the sake of our elderly who need proper care now, and those of us who may require it is the future, I implore you to act now to help them reach a viable solution.

Deb Cullen