Editor, The Times:
Cutting home-support services for seniors in Kamloops is cruel, unfair and expensive.
For the last two years, the Centre for Seniors Information (CSI) has operated a non-medical home-support program that provides many seniors with home-maintenance services they need to remain in their homes.
This program saves you and me many dollars in health-care costs.
Dr. Neena Chappelle at the University of Victoria has demonstrated home-support programs for seniors in B.C. have saved us 40 per cent to 50 per cent in acute- and long-term care costs alone.
One needs only to look at the example of Lynn MacKenzie, who broke her hip while removing old carpeting.
If this had been done for her through the CSI program, the health-care system would have avoided the cost of MacKenzie’s medical care and treatment.
She would not have suffered the pain, inconvenience and expense she experienced through her injury, treatment and recovery periods – and more dollars would have been available for someone else’s health-care needs.
It also saves us many dollars when seniors stay in their own homes and are not forced to move into long-term care facilities.
These residences often charge $4,500 to $6,000 per month, per resident.
While government can take 80 per cent of a resident’s income to help cover costs, most seniors’ incomes do not come close to paying this expense and you and I pick up the remainder of the tab out of provincial health-care dollars.
Any program that allows a senior to stay in their home represents a tremendous savings to you and me, more dollars available for other health-care spending and the independence most seniors want.
Liberal MLAs, including Kevin Krueger and Terry Lake of Kamloops and Health Minister Mike de Jong, have recently stated the CSI provided a valuable service, but added government has no more money.
Yet, five programs elsewhere in B.C., most in the Lower Mainland, have received funding for home-support programs, which are largely copycats of the Kamloops CSI program.
Government continues to form partnerships with investors who want to build more expensive long-term care facilities for which you and I pay.
More seniors are forced to leave their homes and enter these facilities long before their time. Injured seniors are hospitalized at great expense and much of it is preventable.
Some researchers claim every dollar spent on home support saves as much as $8 elsewhere in the health-care system.
The decision by government to cut funding to the Kamloops CSI home-support program is a bad decision. It costs taxpayers too much, the health-care system too much and seniors too much.
Government would have been wiser to invest more money in home-support services, especially in Kamloops.
Rick Turner, co-chair
Kamloops Health Coalition
