Cuts are coming to a long-term care home in Sturgeon Falls.
The province has announced cuts to long-term health care and with that, an estimated $230,000 will be removed from the budget of the Au Château Home for the Aged of West Nipissing.
“The government is cutting two specific programs that subsidize costs in long-term care homes,” Timiskaming-Cochrane MPP John Vanthof said. “The government is saying that these programs aren’t being used to their full extent but what is really happening is that the money is going to subsidize the overall cost of housing people in long-term care like Au Château. The people’s families or the people there will have to pay more or there will be a cut in service. As we all know, we can’t have a cut in service in long-term care so people will have to pay more.”
The programs scheduled to be cut are the High Wage Transition Fund, which helps to pay staff wages and the Structural Compliance Premium fund which helps keep the long-term health centres up to modern standards.
The cuts are scheduled for October 1, and together they amount to around $34 million province-wide.
“The trouble with this government is everything is set in stone, and nothing is set in stone,” Vanthof said. “They announce cuts across the board and they don’t think of where they are cutting or how they are cutting and if people hit back hard enough they back up. These cuts are coming. The government has mandated they are coming and it’s up to us to see if we can push back hard enough that they come to their senses.”
The $230,000 cut at Au Château could have a direct impact on resident care.
“We need these funds as we will have no choice but to cut front-line staff and this is unacceptable as we are already running at low levels,” explained Jacques Dupuis, administrator at Au Château. “The minister [Minister of Long-Term Care Merrilee Fullerton] needs to revisit these cuts, reverse her decision, and address staffing in long-term care by properly funding our sector which has been overlooked for far too long.”
“It’s going to be the family that is going to have to step up to the plate to make sure that their mother or father has the care that they need,” Vanthof continued. “This is going to impact families right across the board, and when you look at what they are doing with schools, they are impacting all ages of families right across the board.”