The Sept. 10 Tait Debate: Thirty home care visits missed in Leduc over the weekend (PLEASE CLICK HERE FOR MORE)

More than 30 people scheduled for home care services in Leduc did not have their shifts covered Sunday. WeCare Home Health Services employee  Cindy Mielke posted the situation on Facebook Sunday before she said she became aware of the situation at 8 a.m. Mielke who has 16 years of experience, was in the Leduc WeCare office when she was told the shifts were not covered by staff. “It’s very unusual,” she said through an email exchange. “I used to be a co-odinator with WeCare. If the weekend and nightly shifts were not booked we stayed late and got them  booked.”

But with Alberta Health Services re-vamping home care recently, staff are leaving the positions. Wages have been cut as well as vehicle allowances for staff. Mielke has seen the damage first-hand. One of her regular clients recently went an entire weekend without getting help for a bowel routine. “I got a phone call at 10:15 one Saturday morning asking if I would go but I was already in Red Deer for the weekend.  WeCare couldn’t fill her shifts,” she says. Two days later Mielke went into work with the woman and she says it was a disaster. “Because she went all weekend without she became very incontinent in her bed and she was deeply embarrassed. Poor woman,” she says. Mielke has also heard of people not getting a bath for a month because of shifts not being filled.

There’s another alarming side of this story: the mental anguish of people with disability being uncertain of personal care attendants not coming. Wondering if you will get help or not can grind a person down. It can dampen one’s confidence to live in the community … independently. The sad thing here is the provincial government is not paying much respect to personal care attendants. Mielke says she’s feeling like a newspaper carrier, rather than someone who provides needed personal care. “AHS needs to understand the rights of the ones who are disabled and or elderly.  I help people with their daily living. I hope I give them dignity and self-respect,” she says. “People that are going through issues, whether it’s having a hard time growing old and all the complications that go with it. Or, ones suffering from disabilities and all the things they go through in a daily manner.”

Wages show respect. But Mielke doesn’t see it. She runs her vehicle for 60 cents per kilometre but is paid  40 cents per kilometre, one way, when she travels to help people in rural Alberta. That means she dips into her own pocket. Clearly, it isn’t worth her while and says, after calculations at $17 per hour, she’s making less than minimum wage. “I’d be making more at Wal-Mart where my car is parked for eight hours,” she says.

And that’s a real shame. Because it takes someone special with understanding, patience and a giant heart to be a personal care attendant.

“I think it’s the love of money, prestige and power,” Mielke says of the current dimise of home care in Alberta. “Until they (AHS) find themselves in a similar position, they really don’t give a damn.”

Front line home care workers need to be paid more. They have to be: otherwise more visits are going to be missed. There were over 30 visits missed Sunday. And, that’s 30 too many.

(Cam Tait has cerebral palsy and uses home care in Edmonton)


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