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)
KEEP THE CONVERSATION ROLLING BY CLICKING HERE
(Cam Tait has cerebral palsy and uses home care in Edmonton)
KEEP THE CONVERSATION ROLLING BY CLICKING HERE
