Dawe, whose mother-in-law lives at Iler Lodge Long-Term Care Facility in Essex, believes that funding for more long-term care staff would lighten the load for current overworked staff and ensure that employees can spend the time with residents that they need to receive quality care.

While Dawe claims Iler Lodge is “one of the best long-term care facilities around,” she has seen what a shortage of staff can do to both the workers and the residents.

“The staff-members go out of their way,” says Dawe. She has seen them take extra minutes to coax her mother-in-law to eat. She has seen them pull double-shifts.

“But if you can imagine the stress on them,” she says.

And while staff-members stretch themselves to cover the bases, they can only go so far, Dawe adds, pointing to the huge amount of paperwork they have to fill out as well.

Less time with the residents is often the result. Dawe notes that when one is working with the elderly, who often don’t hear as well, see as well, understand or move as quickly, time is what is most often needed.

“Imagine trying to get a 91 year-old first of all to hear what you’re saying and then to understand it, then to respond. That takes time and energy,” says Dawe.

If that time isn’t there, residents are rushed and more may be done for them than is required, resulting in reduced independence and potential loss of self-worth.

Dawe believes one of the most devastating impacts is the impact on the residents’ mental health and wellbeing.

“They know, even if they’re not fully cognitive, they know that they care they get takes time,” she says.

If they feel that they’re imposition, because the time can’t be spent with them that is needed, they can tend to give up and lose the will to go on.

“They don’t feel useful or needed,” she says. “They get lonely or depressed. ‘I’m too old, I’m too much trouble.’ I hear them saying that.”

Dawe, the chair of the family council at Iler Lodge, is so passionate about seeing the long-term care system improved in Ontario, she has been a staunch supporter of several campaigns over the past year.

Early in the year she worked tirelessly to support Ontario Long Term Care Association’s (OLTCA) 2006 advocacy campaign. The campaign called on the provincial government to increase operating funding by $306 million over the next two years to fund 20 minutes of additional care per day for the 75,000 Ontarians living in long-term care. Dawe collected over 2000 signatures for that campaign and presented them to local MPP Bruce Crozier.

Dawe was also front and centre at Iler Lodge in gathering petitions to protest the proposed Long Term Care Homes Act (Bill 140) which would include putting a 10-year deadline on licenses for older homes, providers having no recourse after that time. After seven years the government is free to do as it wishes with the older homes, including closing them and moving the beds to another community. Although Iler Lodge would not be impacted by this act, Dawe says it is “unfair” for the older homes.

Dawe has also written to the Windsor Star, expressing her belief that the government does not treat long-term care residents fairly.

“People, whether they have family in long-term care or not, have to get involved and speak up for the senior citizens of Canada, because most can’t speak for themselves. “We have to fight for the rights of our parents.”

She says the payback, eventually, could be an improved system, not only for the people currently in long-term care, but for the younger generation, those like herself, who may eventually require long-term care services as well.