Following the release of the Office of the Seniors Advocate’s (OSA) 2024 report on Monitoring Seniors Services, the Vancouver Sun published an article yesterday highlighting the decline in access to key services for seniors across the province, as well as the simultaneous increase in the need for those services due to the growing aging population. Specifically, it lists key issue including the decline in home care, long-term care beds, and subsidized housing relative to population growth, emphasized by uncoordinated services across ministries.
In addition to underscoring main findings and implications from the report, the article also references BC Care Providers Association’s (BCCPA) All Hands on-Deck white paper, which not only warns that the province is unprepared for the growing aging population, but also provides four recommendations. These include implementing a tax credit that would help seniors to get better aid to stay in their own homes longer; building 5,000 new long-term care beds by 2028; implementing a continuous request-for-proposal model for long-term care providers; and creating a redevelopment fund for aging long-term care infrastructure.
In the article, BCCPA CEO Terry Lake says that the B.C. NDP government’s push to build homes that will be owned and operated by government health authorities has been slow and expensive. He also said that the Association would like to see the province start a more aggressive building program and open it up to bids in the private sector.
Read the full article here.
