Advocacy Points
In your advocacy, please consider the following points that Artists 4 Long Term Care has been urging governments and decision-makers to act upon:
Ensure proper PPE + training
Do not accept lower standards for frontline staff at long-term care facilities than that of hospitals. The virus spreads in the same manner regardless of where one works. Best practices for containment should be enacted everywhere in order to save lives, but especially the frontline of long-term care facilities that go on to overwhelm the frontline of hospitals. It is equally important to begin a massive educational campaign to ensure proper infection control measures are being followed.
Provide a dignified wage for all frontline staff of all long-term care facilities
Many of these workers have been underpaid and undervalued for far too long. Many of them are immigrants and are forced to work multiple jobs at numerous sites in order to make ends meet. The virus is unmanageable when workers are not paid properly. These are the people who care for our elders, our loved ones, our neighbours. Honour that work by giving them the salaries they deserve!
Mobilize activist support
Mutual aid organisations are popping up all over the world to help those in need. Let us not forget the frontline healthcare workers and staff in long-term care. Let’s mobilize to let the workers and residents know that we see them, love them and appreciate them for all that they are doing in this crisis! Let’s direct our mutual aid networks to deliver groceries for frontline staff. Too often these spaces - the workers and residents inside - go unseen and are undervalued.
Devise a containment strategy for the virus that will save the most amount of lives
Experts told us to take our loved one’s home if we wanted to save them. Most of us cannot because our loved one’s care is too complex. Many residents don’t have a home to which they can be brought. Our priority must be to save as many lives as possible by containing the virus and minimizing transmission. How do we do that? By creating dedicated COVID+ hot zones, COVID- cold zones, and in-between warm zones while waiting for the results of testing, each with their own dedicated staff that are not moving between the different zones. Ideally, these zones are not in the same buildings where laundry and food services would need to be shared. Do not transfer COVID+ cases into long-term care facilities to make space at hospitals (as has already happened). These environments need a dedicated staff who will remain in place for months to come. Hire orderlies (PABs) and nurses to do this work. Give them hotel rooms and arrange transportation so that they can self-isolate and minimize exposure outside of work.
Partner with families
A circle of love surrounds every facility - love that emanates from family and friends and the broader community. That circle of love will do anything to protect our loved ones and the heroic staff struggling to care for them inside. Don’t shut us out! We need transparency now more than ever. Consult with families and residents when devising policies that will affect our lives. Long-term care facilities - Tell us how we can support you now and in this crisis. Are there gaps families can help fill? Can families fundraise and donate to an emergency fund that staff can submit to cover their personal needs - rent cars for the workers who ride the bus, get hotel rooms so that workers can self-isolate outside of work, buy groceries for staff’s families, mobilize medical and nursing students among us to maintain adequate staffing ratios, volunteer ourselves in any way that we can to support you?
Prioritize Testing
Do not wait to find out that there is an outbreak once a staff or resident is already showing symptoms. We all know that transmission of the virus often occurs before symptoms begin to show.
Ensure proper staff to patient ratios in all long-term care facilities
As dangerous as the virus is, so is the potential for neglect! We’re all reading horror stories of police and military going into facilities only to find dead bodies left in beds and residents abandoned. We cannot have another Madrid. We cannot have another Dorval.
Give full citizenship to all essential workers - especially those caring for the elderly and the vulnerable in our societies
Caregivers have been heralded as heroes in the Covid-19 fight but many still have to fight to stay in the countries they are working in. As an occupational category, they are not among those professions or skills that are eligible for employment-related green cards. These visas go primarily to researchers, professors, engineers, or multinational managers, but not to caregivers. And this continues, despite the fact that there are more job openings for caregivers than there are for professors and researchers, especially during this time of crisis. Governments should adopt strategies to provide permanent residence permits to people that want to come and work as caregivers. Also already existing caregivers that have been on the front lines of the Covid-19 workforce should be fast tracked to citizenship.