We’ve known since June 1 when the Silverstone Care Centre plan was announced that there had been no public consultation on the future of long-term care in Sechelt. What 200-plus very ticked off residents heard this week was that Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) did not even run the plan by the Sunshine Coast Regional Hospital District board – although VCH’s top official seemed to believe they had.
“Your community leaders were aware of this because we have governance meetings with them, and it was discussed,” VCH president and CEO Mary Ackenhusen said at Monday’s public meeting in Sechelt. In pretty strong terms, Sechelt Mayor Bruce Milne disputed Ackenhusen’s claim. “We were not aware,” said Milne, who sat on the board last year. He added that to suggest they were aware, “when the first we saw [of it] was on the front page of the Coast Reporter, is a step too far.”
Other politicians were similarly indignant.
This amazing sloppiness on the part of VCH was completely in character with the health authority’s appalling “take it or get nothing” approach to long-term care needs on the Sunshine Coast, where a 20-bed wait has been a fact of life for many years, taking a terrible toll on vulnerable seniors and limited hospital resources.
In its latest FAQ handed out at the meeting, VCH defended signing a legally binding contract with the Trellis Group this way: “Without our agreement with the Trellis Group, there will be no new government-funded residential care facility in Sechelt.” Then the clincher: “The 108 residents of Shorncliffe and Totem Lodge would need to continue to live in the current aging and outdated facilities, and the community would not have an additional 20 residential care beds.”
So, unless we go with a particular private operator in a not-very-suitable part of town, shutter our two existing public facilities and make do for perhaps a generation with only enough beds to barely cover the current wait-lists, we don’t get a single new bed. Nada. There’s no taxpayer money for long-term care in Sechelt – unless it goes to Trellis. There are simply no other options.
This is a political position, executed in Vancouver but made in Victoria.
And this appallingly worded FAQ was almost certainly written in Victoria, just like the first Silverstone press release was back in June; the VCH communications staffers were waiting all day for the province to send that little puppy in.
Directing public outrage at VCH is part of the political strategy. By rights, B.C.’s health minister should be the one defending this deeply flawed process, though of course he can’t – because you can’t defend the indefensible.
