The union that represents workers at a Penetanguishene, Ont., retirement home has alleged that residents “are not getting the proper care,” while its management company, Comfort of Living, says its residents are provided the services that they request and are given a “choice.”
Sharleen Stewart, the president of SEIU Healthcare, the union that represents staff at Georgian Bay Seniors Lodge, says that the home has a lot of residents who require “heavy care” and that a lot of residents require memory care, which she says is what would typically be seen in long-term care homes — not retirement residences.
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She says that her members have said the residents in the home should be in a nursing home and that Georgian Bay Seniors Lodge lacks “the proper equipment” to take care of those individuals, such as lifts that can help residents out of bed when they are unable to get up themselves.
In a phone interview Tuesday, Comfort of Living CEO Sam Riad said it’s correct that some residents living in the Penetang home need memory care, while Dennis Boschetto, Comfort of Living’s vice-president of business services, said residents and their families decide “if and when” they will move to long-term care.
“Retirement homes are covered under the Residential Tenancy Act,” Boschetto said. “It’s really, we’re leasing them an apartment and providing services to them. The choice is theirs.”
Boschetto agreed that the retirement home doesn’t have the lift equipment, since it’s not commonly used in retirement homes in general. He said the residence doesn’t advertise that service and doesn’t pretend to provide it.
“We have care planning that we undertake for residents,” Boschetto added. “We sit down (with) them and talk to them about their needs, and if those needs are increasing, where they could be best suited to be. Ultimately, the decision is theirs and we respect that individual decision.”
As Ontario’s COVID-19 cases continue to remain high amid the second wave of the pandemic, Stewart said that the Penetang retirement home is also “terribly short-staffed” and that the employees at the residence are “not trained to provide the care” that its residents require.
But Boschetto said staff in the building are trained to provide services that residents request to have contracted and that are available in their package. This includes infection control practices that go along with those services, he said.
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“If (residents) don’t like what’s going on in a building, they have all the options to them just like any consumer does,” Boschetto added. “There’s various ways to make issues known.”
He said that the residents are “happy” with the staff and that they’ve become “like their family,” but when asked how many staff are working at the retirement home and how many residents there are, Boschetto said he “won’t get into the details about the numbers of people and ratios because that’s not relevant to the scenario.”
“We don’t staff buildings like ours according to ratios,” he said. “In a retirement home, you staff according to the services a person requests.”
Stewart told Global News it’s also been reported to her that residents have been left alone at Georgian Bay Seniors Lodge at night, which Boschetto denies.
“That’s absolutely not true,” he said. “We don’t leave residents alone in the building. We staff appropriately for the night shift, as we do for the day shift and evening shift.”
On top of that, Stewart said the residence appears to be “terribly, terribly run down” and that there’s a lot of maintenance issues, leaving workers feeling unsafe.
“They’re frightened for their own safety but especially the residents,” she said.
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Boschetto said the Penetang retirement residences building, “like any building,” is in “constant need of maintenance.” He noted the home has a “good program” in place for that.
“I’m not aware of any circumstances that put anybody at risk at all,” Boschetto added. “If somebody has an issue, whether it be a resident or a staff member, they have avenues to bring those issues forward.”
According to Stewart, however, the retirement residence is starting off in an “extremely dire situation.”
“The infection control protocols seem absolutely absent in the place,” Stewart said. “They’re just adding fuel to that already-burning fire. If COVID hits them, then they are going to be in serious trouble because they don’t have the staff to take care of it, and it doesn’t sound like they have any infection control measures in there at all.”
Boschetto denies this, saying the home has all the infection control protocols in place that have been directed by the local public health unit, in addition to its own measures.
“The protocols during situations where you have those types of diseases in the community are as per public health,” he said. “All of our staff have access to the full PPE that they require to do their jobs. They use them as appropriate, as they would in hospitals and long-term care.”
Moving forward, Riad said the company is setting up a meeting with the retirement residence’s union representative.
“We’re setting up a meeting as soon as he comes back from vacation to sit down and discuss all these details and understand where this is all coming from,” the CEO said.
In order to solve the alleged issues, Stewart said she believes the retirement home’s management must make the proper investments into the building.
“They’ve got to invest proper financial resources, human resources into this building or else they should be shut down,” she said. “It’s just another indication that there’s not proper oversight on these homes. …
“The government has got to be looking at these for-profit homes once and for all because there’s lives at stake here, with or without the pandemic.”
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