Health Authorities are unwittingly doing the same thing.
That pesky road to hell - being companion to good intentions, creates no end of mix-ups.
On the one hand, we want to keep seniors at home as long as possible as we know through the gathering of statistics (likely flawed surveys of the wrong people at the wrong times **) that the elderly do best when living at home. On the other hand, sometimes people really, really want to go into a situation where they get more care. Read those last five words : where they get more care.
Many times what happens is that they go into extended care where they have no peers among the demented and stroked-out residents, and they die in despair. Many more times they go into Government-assisted living situations, where they do not get more care; they get 2 meals a day, and a small room in a co-op style environment. The problem with this is that most of these people in these placements are people who could not thrive at home with Home Support assisting them. So into Care they go in Assisted Living and their care is taken away at the level they had at home. Give them 3 months and yes, it's off to extended care. There IS no Intermediate care anymore. Not really.
It is a comedy of tragic proportions. All at the top of these healthcare pyramids are people who need desperately to get out of the office and into the field. They need to send out polls to clients in service for longer than 6 months asking questions like:
- What are we doing right?
- What are we doing wrong?
- What can we do better to enable you to stay in your own home?
- Your suggestions to make it a better experience for all concerned.
Too easy I suppose.
I have yet to meet a client who is completely happy with their service as provided.
And I have yet to meet a client who was asked about it.
This needs to be on paper.
Otherwise, apparantly, it doesn't exist.
** like that famous stat that clients statistically expire within 6 months of entering a Care Facility. Kinda a no- doh when people cant get placed until they are dangerously, critically, ill or completely burned out from trying to make it on their own.
