Advocates for Calgarians who have developmental disabilities say they’ve been struggling to navigate the new health rules in place due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“There’s quite a range of settings — different numbers of people in different homes and different styles of homes,” said Erin Waite with the Calgary Service Provider Council.
“The agencies all differ on how they provide services so it’s complex and quite different than other areas of social care.”
The Calgary Service Provider Council works with 35 agencies across the city. Collectively, they work with more than 3,500 adults who have cognitive disabilities.
Waite said the organizations have been dealing with a number of obstacles and it took a month to get specific recommendations from the province on how to keep clients and employees safe.
“A lot of the guidance from public health — and the official guidance on how to keep people safe — has kind of left out the disabilities service sector,” Waite said.
“We’ve all been struggling to figure out how best to support people.”
Multiple organizations said one big hurdle is securing enough personal protective equipment (PPE) for their employees.
“I just talked to my hair stylist today to see if we could get some gloves through her,” said Robyn Jackson, the executive director of L’Arche Calgary.
“Most of our people are at high risk if they catch the virus, so we’re trying really hard to ensure that doesn’t happen.”
Jackson said she put an order in to the province for PPE three weeks ago and still has not received it.
“We’re concerned that if we don’t have this, people will be at risk.”
Those sentiments are being echoed by Waite and other Calgary-based agencies.
“We’ve all become procurement specialists and we’ve bought and paid for ourselves the equipment we need to manage day to day,” Waite said.
On Friday, the province said there have been three group homes in Alberta that have seen confirmed cases of COVID-19.
“At this time, there is no evidence of transmission occurring within any of these homes,” Tom McMillan, the assistant director of communications with Alberta Health, said.
“In every case, the group homes were immediately notified, and Alberta Health Services worked closely with the home to isolate anyone at risk of being exposed.”
Ryan Geake, the CEO of the Calgary SCOPE Society, confirmed that one of its facilities had seen three cases of the virus but said that everyone is doing OK.
Geake also added that over the last few days communication has improved with provincial officials.
“These last couple of days things have kind of been sorted out with the province. Since Wednesday, we’ve started to get all the PPE we need, but at the beginning we were really on our own.”
“We’re kind of an invisible sector, so this has been a learning experience for everyone.”
Diane Carter, the press secretary to the minister of Community and Social Services, said the province has been working closely with the disability community to ensure it has the information and support it needs.
“Soon after public health guidelines were released, Minister Rajan Sawhney held a teleconference with providers to discuss how they will help keep everyone who lives and works in supportive living facilities as safe as possible.”
“We are also having daily talks with the Alberta Council for Disability Services to understand the impact the pandemic is having on Albertans,” Carter said.
Alberta Municipal Affairs officials said the Provincial Operations Centre is coordinating and prioritizing requests for personal protective equipment for all non-AHS facilities.
Carter added the province did not have a record of a request for PPE from L’Arche Calgary and said officials are now reaching out to the organization.
The province said groups in need of PPE are encouraged to make requests through the pessecc-logistics@gov.ab.ca email account.