BarrieToday welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected]. Please include your daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following letter is in response to a story titled 'Protests held outside Roberta Place, Bradford Valley as group seeks industry changes' published on June 25.
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It was with heartfelt appreciation that I read the article featuring the Warrior Advocate Crusade, who are travelling the province protesting the unacceptable conditions in long-term care (LTC) facilities that seniors and staff have been forced to live and work in.
It is long past time that we as a society stop institutionalizing people simply because their needs are increasing due to age, illness, or disability. It is also long past time that we recognize that profit-making in human services creates far too great a risk that people will suffer as profit motives drive decisions that minimize expenditures to their detriment.
The knowledge and capacity exist to support people within their own homes with a much more robust home-care system or to support them in small non-profit houses in their familiar neighbourhoods. In doing so, they can experience much more normalized and valued life experiences than would ever be possible in a large institution, such as the LTC facilities that exist today.
The Ford government is seriously off the mark in continuing to award more ‘beds’ to this antiquated system. Redirect that same funding to what seniors and people with disabilities have been saying they want, not to institutions that should have no place in a caring society.
I know of no one who ever said they wanted to live in an institution. Let’s ensure that the supports that are developed are what any one of us would want should we ever need them.
Linda Till
Sharon, Ont.
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