On January 24 CBC Early Edition interviewed Daniel Fontaine, CEO for the BC Care Providers Association, regarding the release of Strengthening Seniors Care: A Made-in-BC Roadmap . In the days that followed, the CBC opened up their phone lines and asked the public to respond.
What follows are some excerpts from callers to their open line:
Caller 1
I pay my mom’s mortgage and I have three kids of my own. That puts a damper on us. The older she gets the more care she needs. What we need is more tax benefits for those that take care of their parents…
Caller 2
I work for Vancouver Coastal Health. I have done so for a longtime in senior health. I don’t know what the answer is. I think to start by increasing homecare to at least an hour but have people who can talk Italian and Russian. We have lots of communities and we only provide Chinese specific homecare. Transport is the other issue. We have all sorts of programs but actually we can’t get our seniors to them at community centres because we don’t offer transport.
Caller 3
I’m sitting at a stop light driving to the hospital to visit my mom. I help take care of her and I have my own child and now she is sick in the hospital. It would be great if there were beds and it was easier to visit your parents when they were sick…
Caller 4
You are worried about health care for your parents. Spend way less time to worrying about green initiatives and teacher’s union and everything else. Seniors get attacked while we’re just trying to juggle our lives. If you are a family and both parents have to work and then people aren’t getting taken care of properly, seniors of special needs kids, by the government or people we’ve been paying taxes into you have no time to pay attention to legislation that might be against your best interest...
Caller 5
I’m a single parent and I have a son and I also have to take care of my parents who are ailing. The challenges is a work life balance. On a systems level the employers have to be more supportive of people in this generation. What I mean by that is mental health and work life balance…
To listen to the entire segment, click on the link below.
https://soundcloud.com/bc-care-providers-583453035/cbc-early-edition-callers-respond-to-carecanbethere
