“When I start to lose it, put me in a home,” my grandma used to say, laughing in that way you knew was both meant to reassure us and enforce the fact she was serious.
So, we did.
Well, my mom did. Upon a doctor’s confirmation that she was indeed showing signs of dementia, my mom made the easy decision, based on her mother’s wishes, to put my grandma into the Pioneer Home in Outlook. Once settled, she didn’t just survive, she thrived.
Like so many Saskatchewan farm wives, my grandma had endured the wartime-era prairies, making a life for her family with what she had on hand. Gardening, canning and baking weren’t her hobbies, they were her job, albeit one she loved. That continued well into her 70s, long past the time when undertaking those activities was a matter of survival.
When she went into the long-term care home, her new neighbours and friends shared many of the same passions. Pioneer Home recognized that, and regularly held opportunities for its residents to get into the kitchen or dig in the dirt.
Often, upon walking through the double-set of industrial glass doors, visitors were greeted with the scent of freshly-baked chocolate chip cookies. The warmth of that fragrant greeting erased the sense of being in a government-run institution and replaced it with a feeling that, if I closed my eyes and held my grandma’s hand, put us both back in her cozy home kitchen just one more time.
She died about 15 years ago, happy and at peace, after a life of hard work and contribution to the Saskatchewan landscape.
My mother-in-law died in her Prince Albert long-term care home 18 months ago, a 64-years-young woman forced to live with “seniors,” as she used to call them, because she was terminally ill, waiting for a lung transplant that never arrived. Again, the care was phenomenal — her nurses and caregivers attended her funeral as family.
Because that is what makes the difference between living in an institution and being cared for in an institution: the staff.
Facilities don’t need to be state-ofthe-art to provide a loving, safe and dignified home for Saskatchewan seniors. What it takes to provide a home for seniors is love. No, I don’t expect workers to be ecstatic about their job day in and day out, but I do expect them to want to be there.
This means not only that they have to do their part, but we do as well. Long-term care workers need to be properly compensated and supported so they can focus on our loved ones fully, and so that we can ensure future generations consider long-term care a viable vocation, investing in the training and education they need to pursue senior care as their career.
Right now, we’re not doing that. There’s been a marked shift in the way care has been delivered in Saskatchewan over the last decade, a key turning point being the deregulation of basic long-term care standards in 2011, which resulted in discouraging things like “nonessential” baths.
When is the last time you had a non-essential bath, ever? If you wouldn’t bath only once a week, why would or should a senior?
Today, there are thousands more beloved grandmas and grandpas living in long-term care homes across the province, and I am keenly aware that my family members have been fortunate. So, have the staff where they lived, to be honest, because if anyone had treated anyone I loved with a shred of indignity, I’d have lost my ever-loving mind.
In Saskatchewan, we have been extremely fortunate, so far, not to have a fatal COVID-19 outbreak in one of our seniors’ homes. But that fortune wasn’t gained through luck; it has been driven by long-term care workers, on the front lines every day, who have held the virus at bay with their own diligence and professionalism.
It’s time the Government of Saskatchewan rewards those workers with, for starters, a contract, which they’ve been without for two years. Then, we need to go back and re-examine why the provincial government lowered the standards of minimum care for some of most vulnerable people in Saskatchewan — specifically, who benefited from that move and why.
As COVID-19 numbers in Saskatchewan die down again and stories continue to pop-up of seniors suffering at the hands of poor treatment, it appears we still have an open window to make any necessary changes to our long-term care system — from the top down.
We’re not immune in Saskatchewan to the horrors that have emerged from long-term care homes in Ontario and Quebec; let’s seize the opportunity we have right now to ensure they never do.
-Tammy Robert