Duane Hicks
At long last, assisted living will be available to high-risk seniors in Fort Frances later this year.
Allan Katz, CEO of Riverside Health Care Facilities, Inc., said Friday that 12 spots will be funded here this year by the North West Local Health Integration Network while Atikokan will get six in addition to the seven it already has.
What’s more, Fort Frances will get an additional 12 next year and 12 more in 2017.
Meanwhile, Emo will be getting six units next year and Rainy River, which currently has 10 assisted living units in Riverview Manor there, will be getting an additional four in 2016-17 (Riverside does not provide support for the units in Rainy River; this is done by the Northwest Independent Living Service).
The 12 units here will be located in Rose Manor and Green Manor—the east-end seniors’ apartments maintained by the Rainy River District Social Services Administration Board.
High-risk seniors will be able to get a variety of support services to help them in their daily living, ranging from medication management, laundry, and bathing assistance to help getting dressed and feeding reminders.
There even will be friendly visiting to check in and see how the senior is doing.
Katz said the assisted living to be provided is specifically for “high-risk seniors.”
He explained that “high risk” can range from a senior who is at risk of falling to someone who takes a considerable amount of medication because they have multiple chronic conditions, like diabetes or a respiratory illness.
“How do we make sure that those people are complying with their pill regimes? How do we make sure that they’re eating well?” asked Katz.
“How do we make sure that their personal hygiene is maintained?”
He said these all are ways in which Riverside might be able to help high-risk seniors.
“Most of the time, a lot of it is the socialization component,” Katz remarked.
“Statistically speaking, people who live by themselves, and there’s no socialization component to their lives, those people are at risk,” he noted.
“Whereas if you’re living in an assisted living centre, even for high-risk seniors, there’s more of that socialization and that delays the ultimate admission into long-term care.”
Care will be delivered by Riverside staff.
Katz said the funding will allow for 12 hours of oversight per day, as well as on-call component.
This means support staff will be working 12 hours a day, though not necessarily 12 hours consecutively (it could be broken up into several shifts).
The assisted living for high-risk seniors is a partnership whereby Riverside provides the support service, the Northwest Community Care Access Centre determines who gets it, while DSSAB provides the buildings.
“It’s very positive for the district,” said DSSAB CAO Dan McCormick, adding assisted living is something numerous agencies have been trying to get here for years.
McCormick said there is an overall vacancy of about 18 percent at Rose and Green Manors, meaning there is room to accommodate new residents and put in an office where Riverside staff would work out of.
“It will still be seniors’ housing but if someone needed a shower and they were wheelchair bound—our apartments are not 100 percent accessible—Riverside would have one of our apartments with a drive-in shower stall, and they could either allow the tenant to use that or provide the service to bathe them,” cited McCormick.
He clarified the regular apartments won’t be upgraded but one unit would be converted to an office with a fully-accessible bathroom.
“One of the good things about this initiative is we don’t have to rely on having to build anything,” noted Katz.
“We’re using existing build stock.
“It may have to be modified somewhat but we are using existing resources,” he stressed.
Assisted living for high-risk seniors is not the same as the assisted living/retirement living community the Assisted Living Action Group (A.L.A.G.) is developing with Cherish Community Living Ltd., as reported in last week’s Times.
But A.L.A.G. said that seeing “government agencies working together is a positive step.”
“The agency plan will be appropriate for a small portion of seniors who are currently in desperate need for service and accommodations,” A.L.A.G. spokesperson Erma Armit told the Times.
“ALAG’s short- and long-term plan offers a unique, all-inclusive style of living while aging at home in a clustered community setting,” she added.
“Both are needed.”
Katz agreed.
“We’re very supportive of [A.L.A.G.], too,” he stressed.
“Both activities are important for the District of Rainy River because up until this point, your alternatives were to stay at home on your own or with some support that could be provided through community support services and the CCAC [Community Care Access Centre], the hospital, which truly is a place where you go for acute care, or a long-term care home like Rainycrest or one of the beds in the ELDCAP units either in Rainy River or in Emo.
“There’s been nothing in-between,” Katz noted.
“And so what we’ve wanted to do, and what the goal of the seniors’ strategy is provincially, is to try and establish wraparound services to keep people at home as long as they can with the appropriate level of support, living safely.
“When you can’t [stay at home], there’s various stages,” Katz added. “It doesn’t necessarily mean that there comes a time and then, ‘poof,’ you automatically have to go to Rainycrest.
“It’s a progression so if you can no longer live safely at home, you can move into an assisted living centre for high-risk seniors.”
The first placement in this new wave of assisted living for high-risk seniors will be at Fotheringham Court in Atikokan next month, with more seniors to be placed both here and there sometime later this year.
“It’s nice to have the verbal go-ahead [from the LHIN] but we actually want to see the documentation,” Katz said.
“Plans are in place, and we’re doing what we can to move ahead both in Fort Frances and in Atikokan.
“There’s a lot of moving parts to it,” he conceded. “There’s renovations that have to take place, there’s assessments that have to be done by the CCAC to determine eligibility for candidates.”
He also noted the cost to high-risk seniors to receive the services also is being determined.
As well, Katz said it’s unrealistic to expect all 12 residents to be brought into Rose and Green Manor on the same day or week; the placements will be spread out over a number of weeks.
Looking ahead, there also has to be planning for the assisted living units in Emo next year, as well as the additional units here next year and the year after that.
The rationale behind the assisted living enhancements is outlined in the North West LHIN’s “Informing Care for Seniors Plan,” which notes that “people are living longer with multiple and complex co-morbidities, resulting in greater health care needs.”
“Consequently, there is increased pressure on caregivers, communities, and our health-care system to effectively and efficiently meet the demands of the new frail seniors,” it adds.
As such, the North West LHIN developed “a comprehensive plan that identifies the stakeholder perspective of the current state of services for seniors and identifies priorities for new or expanded services over the next three years.”
