A Good point of view for Alison Redford: Nic Good

Premier Alison Redforrd spoke Tuesday and encouraged people with disabilities to trust her with home care changes. (Here's the story)

Nic good gets home care. This is his response.

Nic Good // PHOTO: GREG SOUTHAM, EDMONTON JOURNAL

Alison Redford wants me to trust her. 

My response? 

What have you done to earn my trust? Alison Redford, your government is taking away my caregiver support agency. I wish I could ask you face-to-face, what is your plan to replace my caregivers?

 What is the transition period going to involve? What are we transitioning to? Of course you have the answers to all my questions. You know the intimate details about my disability, don't you? You know exactly what I need from my caregivers on a day-to-day basis. You know exactly how Creekside Support Services operates. You also know how much less it's going to cost to replace my on-site caregivers. 

After all that's the only reason you're making any changes. You must know something about business that I don't. The way I see it, businesses exist to make a profit. They don't provide a service just for fun. 

You will be bringing in an off-site agency to manage my caregivers. That offsite agency is a business. Maybe in your world, the one where I'm supposed to trust you, businesses get paid with rainbows and lollipops. It would be pretty easy to save money if that were the case. 

I don't believe you know anything about Creekside Support Services. I don't believe you have any type of plan to transition caregivers Creekside Support Services. I don't trust you as far as I could throw you!

CLICK HERE TO READ THE EDMONTON JOURNAL STORY FOR NIC GOOD'S COMPLETE STORY

Trust Redford Alison Redford on home care??? Heidi Janz says forget it but thanks for the laugh

Premier Alison Redford asked Albertans to trust her with home care issues Tuesday.

CLICK HERE FOR STORY.

But Dr. Heidi Janz doesn't buy it. At all.

Premier Redford asks people with disabilities to “trust” her government to meet their needs?

Heidi Janz

Dr. Janz writes ...

Well, I’m sorry, Ms. Redford, but, first of all, MY trust needs to be EARNED. And secondly, your government has already broken my trust.

Your government broke my trust when it allowed AHS to arbitrarily terminate the contracts of user-operated  homecare services like Creekside Support Services, which has provided me with high quality homecare for the past seven years. Because our program is innovative and flexible, my aides were able to provide me with personal care outside my home. This meant I could do things like work as a professor at the University of Alberta and travel to conferences. In retrospect, I can now see that I  should have trusted your government that the termination of my position due to cutbacks was actually for my good. After all, now that I will no longer be able to receive homecare services outside my actual apartment, I would likely have had to quit my job now anyway—if I still had one.

Likewise, you want me to trust that the big-box, for-profit  homecare providers whom you’ve now contracted to provide my care, will provide me with the same quality of care as our current healthcare aides, many of whom  I’ve worked with for six years or more. And I suppose you also want me to trust you that it’s actually a GOOD THING that I will have absolutely no control  over where, when, or by whom, my homecare will be provided.

The sad fact is, Premier Redford, I don’t trust you. AT ALL.

But thanks for the laugh – I really needed it!!

                             CAM'S CONNECT CLICK

A great start to my day - CAM 'n Eggs - June 4

(All this week I am sharing how home care makes me independent as a husband, father, grandfather, employee, taxpayer and so much more. The provincial government is making drastic changes to home care without any consultation with consumers of the service.)

Weekdays starts in the Tait household a little before 7 a.m. when I get out of bed myself using a pole at the side of our bed to get in my wheelchair. I wheel to my den to work on my computer for 45 minutes before my 10-year-old grandson Nicholas arrives. Nic always gives me a good morning hug and we visit and have breakfast together until my wife Joan drives him to school.

By then it is 8:30 a.m. A personal care assistant comes to help me get ready for work. They wheel me into the washroom off our bedroom and help me undress before getting me into a wheel-in shower. I am helped from my wheelchair to transfer onto a bath seat. My assistant adjusts the water temperature and showers me. When I am done, I get help drying off before getting assistance getting dressed — underwear, pants, shirts, socks, shoes — for the day. I am shaved and get brush my teeth after my assistant puts toothpaste on my toothbrush.

I wheel back into my den and my assistant packs my laptop into my computer bag with my lunch. My assistant helps me takes my vitamins and then wheels me out the front door. I leave for work at 9:30 a.m. I don’t have an assistant at the office, but my co-workers are very good about helping me when I need it.

COMING WEDNESDAY: The evening shift

Part One from Monday

Meet my grandson Nicholas

Wanted: drummers. Apply here!

The Redford Home Invasion Facebook Page

The Cam Contact Click!

A very personal look at personal care

  

I respect and appreciate giving you details about my personal care may be a bit over the top, but it's  something I’ve decided to do. Because I am fearful of  my future independence. I have cerebral palsy, use a wheelchair and rely on personal care attendants for my basic daily needs. My wife Joan and I have lived in a condo for the past 17 years with hour home care.

Now, with provincial government cutbacks, that program is ending. A group of us with physical disabilities formed a corporation in 1996 to provide 24-hour home care in a newly-constructed condo building. We each own our units and pooled our home care funding to hire staff to assist us in our homes. We hire staff, administer the program and stress the importance of being in control of our own services. Essentially, we provide our own services to ourselves. It is one of a kind.

We received written notice from the provincial government Friday our program's contract will not be renewed.   Instead, an outside agency will be brought in to give us personal care, an agency who will have very little information — if any — of our consumer-based service which promotes independence. I am scared. I am unhappy. And I do not believe this is right. So over the next few days on my blog I am going to write about the wonderful staff I have been working with for years who let me be a husband, a father, a grandfather, an employee and so many other things.

So I am welcoming you intto our home — a home I hope to maintain with independence for many more years.

PLEASE CLICK HERE TO SIGN AN ON-LINE PETITION AGAINST HOME CARE!