Retirees losing home care service band together to find new agency, hoping to bring back terminated staff

Residents of a Winnipeg retirement complex say they were left scrambling to find a new agency that can provide the home care services they rely on to do things like eat meals and take medicine, after dozens of health-care aides received termination notices.

Retirees losing home care service band together to find new agency, hoping to bring back terminated staff Winnipeg residence to end home care program after dismissing health-care aides who just unionized Residents of a Winnipeg retirement complex say they were left scrambling to find a new agency that can provide the home care services they rely on to do things like eat meals and take medicine, after dozens of health-care aides received termination notices. "It is not just frustrating but so offensive and hurtful. It really makes us feel disposable," Joelle Robinson told CBC News.

"Our needs weren't really taken into consideration." On June 22, the 55-year-old retiree was told the home care service she has been receiving while living for almost three years at Shaftesbury Park Retirement Residence was going to be cancelled on Aug. 20. The Tuxedo facility manages its own home care service, a spokesperson for the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority said.

Robinson retained the home care service and said she has been "completely dependent" on them to get through her days. She is paralyzed and needs assistance to eat meals and take pills, as well as for morning and evening care. About 70 of the 80 health-care aides that work at the retirement residence received termination notices in late June, on the same day the Manitoba Labour Board certified CUPE as the bargaining agent for the workers.

Robinson and other residents were told they had to find a new agency for home care services, because the program they had used was losing money and Shaftesbury Park could not continue operating it. "What went through my mind was, 'What the hell am I going to do?'" Robinson said.

Terry Hopkinson, who's lived at the retirement home for over a year, says staff were used to the kind of help he required, including to take pills and with his morning care. "Now ... if we don't get the same staff [back], we're going to have to train a bunch, everybody, maybe every night, who knows," he said. That also worries Robinson and other residents who had developed relationships with the staff who were terminated.

Train staff every day "There's nothing more frustrating than having to basically train staff every day — what your needs are, how to do the job," she said. "A lot of us are very fragile, and having people who don't know what they're doing can be actually painful." Hopkinson and Robinson formed a committee to make arrangements with a new agency for them and other retirees who signed up.

"We're looking after us — that's what we're trying to do," Hopkinson said. "We want to get the right people in place that can look after us and our needs." They said trying to find individual coverage would have not only been logistically more complex but also an expense many couldn't afford.

Some agencies require a contract with a base number of hours a day, and the bill would be higher than the funding the retirees receive from the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority for care, Hopkinson said. "They wanted three hours minimum, not half an hour, and they wanted about $5 more than what the ... authority was prepared to pay," he said. "I just couldn't do it."

They are now close to finalizing an arrangement with Just the Right Care Services, but the process of finding an organization wasn't easy — in part because residents at the retirement home need care from early morning to late at night every day of the year. Robinson said the committee wants the agency they have selected to hire the people who were terminated to have continuity of care, but that depends on the number of retirees onboard with them. "The more that sign up, the more staff [they] can hire," Robinson said.

Hopkinson said so far, about 35 to 40 of around 65 retirees are planning to get care from the new agency. "It's coming along, and I'm very optimistic it's going to work. It is going to work," he said.

A spokesperson for the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority said Shaftesbury Park is a private assisted living facility and the WRHA doesn't recruit, employ or dismiss care workers in the residence's home care program. CBC reached out to Toni Hudson, the facility's executive director, and All Seniors Care Living Centres, the facility's operator, but hasn't heard back. The president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees Manitoba said the union withdrew from mediation with the employer, and the matter is now before the Manitoba Labour Board.

With files from Alana Cole