$100M for home support: Québec could do better
The investment of $100M fir home support announced by the Québec Government on Sunday, November 15, may be a step in the right direction, but it remains clearly not enough to cover all the needs of the population.
The Minister of Seniors stated that home support is the future of the health network, but is unable to formulate clear objectives as to the place this care should hold. By sprinkling money into different programs, the government is demonstrating a lack of vision on this issue.
For many years, home care has only represented a modest 15% of the long-term care budget in Québec. For example, en Suède, la part du budget des soins de longue durée consacrée au soutien à domicile est de 41 %. En Finlande, elle est de 52 % et au Danemark, elle se situe à 73 % .
Although it may seem commendable to reserve money to increase the salaries of employees in social economy enterprises and service voucher employees (including natural caregivers), that is not enough for workers not to have insecure jobs. Therefore, the FIQ believes that adding extra staff in public services should be the preferred route.
Home is the population’s first choice for receiving long-term care, and the needs are only growing. In each one of her annua reports, the Ombudsperson indicates a levelling down and the fact that “too many destitute people do not have access to the services which they should be entitled to and their loved ones are exhausted waiting for the support that never comes.” The State only meets 5% of the needs of people with loss of autonomy living at home (Rima Elkouri, 10 septembre 2020): to attain an objective of covering 40% of home care needs, an investment of $4 billion is needed, according to the IRIS.
The announced amounts clearly do not meet the needed catch-up. The groups representing the elderly, people with handicaps and natural caregivers reacted to this announcement with caution. A medium and long-term strategy is also demanded.