Extendicare homes working with resident and family councils to get postcards signed
Buy-in from all stakeholders is helping push advocacy campaign forward
Friday February 27, 2009 -- Deron Hamel
Extendicare long-term care homes have been working with resident and family councils to help drive this year’s Ontario Long-Term Care Association (OLTCA) advocacy campaign.

Because residents and their families have become involved with this year’s campaign, homes are meeting their targets of getting as many postcards signed as possible in support of the initiative, say home representatives.

Tanya Schumacher, the administrator at Extendicare Tri Town in Haileybury, says residents and family members have long been engaged in the annual campaign, and look forward to getting involved to help spread the OLTCA’s message.

“They have done this every year for us and they were quite excited to do it, and they’ve been going out there and talking to their co-residents and family members about the importance of this,” she says, adding that to date, about 50 postcards have been signed and returned to the home.

The deadline for returning signed postcards to homes is March 6.

This year’s advocacy campaign is aimed at increasing the sector’s capacity to deliver care to Ontarians. By making more funding available, the sector will be better positioned to expand services to include patients waiting for beds in acute-care hospitals, while eliminating the need for residents to make trips to emergency rooms.

The sector is using the campaign to send this message to the provincial government ahead of the 2009 budget, which will be released March 26. Once the postcards are signed and received by homes, they are hand-delivered to local MPPs, who will then bring them to Queen’s Park.

Postcards are embossed with this year’s campaign slogan, “Long-Term Care Can Help Make the Numbers Work.”

“I think that the slogan pretty much speaks for itself, and it’s a wonderful (idea) to get out there,” says Schumacher.

Like Extendicare Tri Town, Extendicare Cobourg is also engaging its resident and family councils in the importance of the campaign. Brenda Summers, resident program manager at the Cobourg long-term care home, says team members at the home explained the campaign to everyone and it has taken off from there.

“Our residents and family members are really getting behind this whole process and they’ve been waiting for the (campaign) to come along since the last time,” she says.

Summers says this year’s advocacy campaign sends an important message about the role long-term care can play in reducing wait times in hospitals and emergency rooms, adding she feels the sector can play an important part in filling that gap.

“I think there’s a real need out there,” she says.

If you would like to send a postcard electronically in support of this year’s advocacy campaign, please follow this link.

As a long-term care provider, what are your homes doing to engage residents and family members in this year’s postcard campaign? If you have a story you would like to share, please contact the newsroom at 800-294-0051, ext. 23, or e-mail deron(at)axiomnews.ca.

If you have any feedback on this story, please contact the newsroom at 800-294-0051, ext. 23, or e-mail deron(at)axiomnews.ca.