For 40 years, Manitoba’s universal home-care program has been providing support and care to seniors letting them safely live longer in their homes. To celebrate this milestone, the Manitoba government has proclaimed Sept. 8 to 14 as Home Care Week and has committed to further improving this program for families, Health Minister Erin Selby and Healthy Living and Seniors Minister Sharon Blady announced.
“Home care has come a long way in the past 40 years and that’s because of the commitment of home-care workers, and the support of our government providing these services at no cost,” said Minister Selby. “Today, we celebrate the past 40 years and also look forward to the future and how we can continue to make investments that keep this program strong and responsive to new needs.”
The Manitoba Home Care Program provides all health-care and home-support services free of charge. This is a unique feature of Manitoba’s program compared to most other provinces, helping close to 40,000 Manitobans each year, Minister Selby noted.
“Receiving home care was a real blessing for me. My home-care workers showed real compassion for me,” said Roseanne Coma, who received home-care services. “They not only helped with my health issues, but also connected me with a local dietician who has helped me lose more than 70 pounds and provided other suggestions that have really improved my health. I am so grateful to them for their help. I feel I am back to living my life.”
The Manitoba Home Care Program was the first comprehensive, universal provincial home-care service in the country. Since 1999, the program budget has almost doubled to $310 million from $165 million to support quality care and to provide services to more clients, and user fees introduced in the 1990s have been eliminated, Minister Selby said.
“From those folks who assess a client’s needs when they’re being released from hospital, to those who schedule literally hundreds of intimate and varied tasks per day, we’re always striving to keep the care in home care,” said Michelle Gawronsky, president, Manitoba Government and General Employees’ Union. “When it comes to those providing the hands-on care, we’ve made strides in turning what was essentially a casual job with no benefits or security into an organized and sustainable workforce of nearly 5,000 members. The key now is to keep building so that all Manitobans can age with the dignity and respect they deserve.”
The ministers also announced a new home-care pilot program operating in west Winnipeg is underway, testing a new model for enhanced care in partnership with the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority and All Seniors Care.
“Seniors have helped shape this province into the wonderful place it is today and by investing in home care, we’re helping them live with dignity in their homes,” said Minister Blady. “This program, although very new, is already responding to client needs and I’m looking forward to how we can use this program to make further enhancements for home-care services in the rest of the province.”
The program has just been implemented at Sturgeon Creek II Retirement Residences and will begin later this fall at the Shaftsbury Park Retirement Residence.
“This pilot is aimed at making some changes that will provide more on-site assessments and case co-ordination, meaning staff can better respond to changing client needs,” said Réal Cloutier, vice-president and chief operating officer, Winnipeg Regional Health Authority. “We think this new approach will help catch situations where a person’s health is deteriorating, reduce trips to the emergency department and allow the person to live longer in their home, delaying or eliminating the need for placement in a personal care home.”
The project provides funding to hire three additional staff to provide home-care services. This means current home-care clients will receive more one-on-one time with home care workers, and home-care services will become more flexible in meeting the needs of clients, Minister Blady said.
The program announced today builds on previous investments to help seniors remain safely in their home longer, the ministers noted, adding this includes the implementation of two hospital home teams in 2012, which supports people with fragile and complicated health conditions to stay at home and reduce their dependency on hospital-based care.
Clients receive house calls from a co-ordinated team of health professionals including doctors, nurse practitioners and other allied health staff whose services are traditionally provided in hospitals.
A provincially funded pilot project in Winnipeg in 2011 showed this form of care can cut emergency room visits and hospital admissions by more than 50 per cent.
For more information on home care in Manitoba, visit www.gov.mb.ca/health/homecare.
