{"id":28657,"date":"2021-02-04T13:52:49","date_gmt":"2021-02-04T18:52:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=28657"},"modified":"2021-02-04T13:52:55","modified_gmt":"2021-02-04T18:52:55","slug":"seniors-housing-needs-to-move-away-from-long-term-care-default-chats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/seniors-housing-needs-to-move-away-from-long-term-care-default-chats\/","title":{"rendered":"Seniors housing needs to move away from long-term care “default”: CHATS"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It is time for long-term care to be reconsidered as the default housing for the elderly, according to Christina Bisanz, CEO of CHATS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ms. Bisanz, head of CHATS \u2013 Community and Home Assistance for Seniors, which serves York Region and South Simcoe, pressed Federal Minister of Seniors Deb Schulte for an increased emphasis on measures for aging in place during a virtual roundtable hosted by Newmarket-Aurora MP Tony Van Bynen late last month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen will we be able to stop looking at long-term care institutions as the de facto default for the elderly and housing for the elderly?\u201d asked Ms. Bisanz, looking for any opportunities the Federal Government and Ms. Schulte\u2019s Ministry might have to make it happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These opportunities, said Ms. Bisanz, could include working with developers to provide incentives for varying housing models \u201cthat truly enable people to age in place, to age in their own homes, with appropriate community support.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat would be if they do need additional personal support in the home, community supports to help them get around, but moving away from just building more and more beds to encouraging the building of homes that will support people to age in place.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is a move forwards housing for seniors with complex needs and lots of support though long-term care, said the Minister, but other countries are following a different path.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ms. Schulte said recent conversations with Ontario\u2019s Ministers of Long-Term Care and Seniors helped underscore this point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI said I am bit concerned about the money that we\u2019re bringing to the table to help through the National Housing Strategy and also the Rapid Housing Strategy that we have brought, which seems to be pushing such urgency and the model seems to be pushing towards these 100-bed facilities,\u201d said Minister Schulte. \u201cThat isn\u2019t what seniors want to live in. How do we make sure that in our rush to accommodate the need we\u2019re not creating the environment that people don\u2019t want to be in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere are other models. In our National Housing Strategy, it is the first time that we looked at long-term care, not just in a health mode, because it was always deemed from a Federal perspective that this is a health issue, not a housing issue. It is a continuum of housing and we need to think of it that way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe challenge is it is complicated because we have to do it in conjunction with the Provinces and territories because they fund the health care portion. There is a housing portion, so how do we work that combination? We\u2019re still trying to work that out. We have money at the table, not only the 7,000 seniors\u2019 residences that we want to build or encourage to be built\u2026 in communities; We want to make sure we\u2019re encouraging the opportunity to support long-term care as well and assist those being done.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are \u201creally great, creative ideas\u201d that are coming up from community organizations and non-profits, the Minister noted, adding that if any of these are ultimately borne to fruition that it will only be done with partners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe need to get cooperation from the Provinces to be able to do a different model and my understanding is they are supportive. It just has to make sense, economically, that it can be done. It is a call to the community. If we want to see different kind of housing built, let\u2019s work together to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Long-term care wasn\u2019t the only issue brought to the table during the virtual discussion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Dave LeGallais, President of the Aurora Seniors\u2019 Association (ASA), focused on the rollout of COVID-19 vaccinations. The Aurora Seniors\u2019 Centre, he said, is closed again due to present health restrictions after a brief re-opening window of two months. Although the Minister did not weigh in on the specifics of the Seniors\u2019 Centre proposal, Dr. LeGallais said the Board of the ASA was considering requiring all members receive vaccinations should they want to participate in activities hosted by the Seniors\u2019 Centre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSince we were only open for two months and we\u2019re closed again,\u201d he said. \u201cBut of 40 different activities, we had only access to six of them because of the health standards. We couldn\u2019t bring the other activities in. When we went into Code Red, we could only get ten people in a room. We\u2019re probably servicing about five per cent of our members.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy question to you is once we are able to open again and vaccines are available to all seniors, our Board was considering mandatory vaccinations for people who come into the Centre. I am not sure if legally we can do this, but what I do know is if we can do it we are going to get a lot more people coming into the Centre because they are going to feel safer and we can probably add most of our activities back again.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong>
Editor
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter<\/em><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is time for long-term care to be reconsidered as the default housing for the elderly, according to Christina Bisanz, CEO of CHATS. Ms. Bisanz, head of CHATS \u2013 Community and Home Assistance for Seniors, which serves York Region and South Simcoe, pressed Federal Minister of Seniors Deb Schulte for an increased emphasis on measures […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-7sd","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-20 14:06:53","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28657\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}