A vocal seniors rights advocate in New Brunswick has seen no sign of a transportation plan to help seniors stay in their homes longer.
Cecile Cassista is the Executive Director of the Coalition for Seniors and Nursing Home Residents’ Rights.
She says seniors living at home are paying taxes, buying groceries, and living in a healthier environment, but they have concerns over transportation.
“Do I move into an apartment near a bus route, because at some point I may not be able to drive?’” says Cassista. “So those are the things that some of those seniors are thinking about, but what I’m seeing come across my desk is the fact that the government is pushing more nursing home initiatives.”
She says despite new accessible buses, which she admits are very nice, public transit simply doesn’t go everywhere and may not be suitable alternative for many seniors.
“So it would be really a hardship for them to be continuously having to use a taxi service in order to get out, to get their groceries, and those kinds of things,” says Cassista. “So it is going to be a hardship unless the government buckles down and has a serious look at a strategy.”
Cassista says the government is more concerned about pushing home care and nursing home beds than they are about wanting to help seniors live in their own homes for longer.
She adds it’s a win win if seniors get to stay in their own homes because they remain contributing members of society, and it saves the government money.
Cassista says by her recent calculations, hospital stays cost about $800 a day, staying in a nursing home can total up to $3,500 a month, all compared to $1,395 per month to stay in their own home.
She adds many seniors are unable to afford to $113 per day cost of a nursing home so they apply for a provincial subsidy, which leaves them with minimal income to purchase their necessities.
Since January 2018, the provincial government has announced $24.6 million in renovations for nine nursing homes across New Brunswick.
In that same time period they also announced 566 new nursing home beds, and 4 new respite care beds.
Back in February, the Gallant Government said they had a five year nursing home plan.
In the news release at the time, the government said they intend to create more than 1,000 new nursing home beds, and memory care beds over the next five years, inlcuding 407 beds for people living with Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia.
Cassista says since 2006 seniors have been asking for more home care support and she is beside herself that “twelve years down the road, and I’m still out there advocating that we want home care, and the government’s still saying that we need nursing homes.”
The only thing that’s changing, says Cassista, is that she’s getting older.
We have reached out to the Department of Social Development asking for a comment about a transportation plan for seniors.
