Quick Ways to be Involved

Share the toolkit online: link

Search for Facebook groups focusing on long-term care in your area.

Support the #artists4longtermcare initiative

• Make and share art, infographics

• Follow and share our Instagram @artists4longtermcare

• Call, email, tweet your local politicians about long-term care

• Sign local, regional, national petitions

• Post using these hashtags: #CaringMajority #NoBodyIsDisposable #NamingTheLost #JusticeForLongTermCare #NoICUGenics #YouAreEssentialToUs

Artists

Artists 4 Long Term Care is a social action initiative that uses art and storytelling to raise awareness of the crisis facing residents and staff of long-term care facilities during the Covid-19 pandemic and beyond. We invite artists, photographers, writers, and filmmakers to create works that confront this issue, to be shared on social media with the hashtag #artists4longtermcare with a call to action to the community to be part of the change.

Here is an audio interview with the co-founder Kitra Cahana about @artists4longtermcare.

• Follow and share images from the instagram account: www.instagram.com/artists4longtermcare

• Read the artist brief in English HERE. And in French HERE. Share it with other artists, photographers, poets, filmmakers etc. who may want to participate.

• Find powerful quotes and statistics about long-term care and make infographics. Post on social media and encourage others to take action now.

• Send high res images of your artwork to artists4longtermcare@gmail.com.

• Do you know street art collectives who could make posters? Reach out to them and see if they could print posters or wheat paste artwork around your city.

For Families

Click here for support for families: Link

Ways to Support Residents and Staff

There are many ways to support residents and staff. At every step try to find out what the frontline staff needs and how you can be most helpful. Many of these facilities are short-staffed and under tremendous time constraints, so try to be as organized as possible. When you call or e-mail make sure you have something substantial to offer the facility. In an ideal scenario you will follow the facility’s lead and establish a good line of communication with the administration and frontline staff. At many facilities this may not be possible because of a lack of trust and communication between families and the administration. Many families have been experiencing a lack of transparency, so all of these suggestions may not be possible in all situations.

Care Packages

Create care packages for frontline staff and residents with essential items. Any donation needs to be coordinated with the facility to make sure you are following all infection control protocols and the effort will be beneficial.

• DO Organize big deliveries. Small donations are inefficient and can create logistical nightmares for those on the inside.

• DO Follow strict protocols for any donations you plan to make. The last thing you want to do is potentially bring in the virus from the outside. Check out these protocols.

• DO Coordinate with staff to make sure someone will receive your donation. 

• DO Make one person or a small number of people from your group the point person(s) for coordination with the facility to streamline communication.

• DO NOT handle any donations if you are experiencing symptoms of coronavirus or if you’ve been exposed to others who have tested positive.

• DO NOT drop off items without making sure that the facility’s infection control team will allow it to go inside.

Needed items for Staff

• Ear Protectors

  •  CROCHET

  • HEADBAND

  • PLASTIC

• Portable hand sanitizer

• Hand lotion

• Lysol wipes

• Lysol disinfectant spray

• Tide pods

• Toilet paper

• Thermometers

• Pulse oximeters

• Compression socks

• Power banks 

• Tote bag / Backpack for work clothes

• Face cream

• Snacks 

• Energy drinks

• Bottled water

• Massage devices

• Soothing eye mask

• Subscription for Food delivery (Goodfood, HelloFresh)

• Gift cards for gas, uber rides, instacart groceries etc. 

• Reusable face masks (the facility should be providing face masks during worker’s shifts. But reusable masks are useful for when they go home

• Essential items to consider donating to residents. Residents are at a great risk of growing lonely, depressed and bored as they are forced to live in isolation. To alleviate some of this consider donating:

For residents

• Coloring books

• Stuffed animals (for residents with dementia) 

• Books

• Fidget/Twiddle Muff for residents with dementia (find a free pattern here)

• Photo albums of loved ones. 

• Special comfort foods/meals (if allowed)

• Art supplies

• TVs/radios

• Puzzles

• Kindles/iPads

• cards/letters

• Telephones / computers

• fans/air conditioners

• iPads/tablets for staff members to help residents and family members conduct virtual visits.

• Meals. Reach out to caterers and restaurants to see if they can donate large quantities of meals.

• Bulk Cleaning Supplies

• Personal Protective Equipment

Local advocacy groups

Write collective letters of advocacy as a group.

• DO try to figure out who actually has the power to implement better policies for the facility and address the letters to them. In the public sector most of the time these policies are set by local, state and provincial governments, not by the facility itself.

• DO Educate yourself about COVID-19 and long-term care facilities. Read about best practices for how the virus was contained in other countries and cities and direct your advocacy to ensure that those best practices are being followed.

  • See these guidelines from the BC Center for Disease Control (May 19, 2020)

  • Check out this toolkit  on State Actions to Mitigate COVID-19 Prevalence in Nursing Homes (May 2020) 

  • This is the most up-to-date Ontario guidelines

DO NOT contact frontline staff demanding different policies be implemented. Most likely (unfortunately) they have little power to change the policies that are in place. They also have very limited time to care for the residents. If every family member called them it would interfere with their ability to provide care. This is a difficult situation: in some locations the frontline staff might be the only people picking up the phone. As much as possible these calls should be reserved for speaking about the care and health of loved ones.

Determine what kinds of resources your group has to offer the facility.

Are there psychiatrists or trained counselors in your group or network of friends who could offer pro bono services to the frontline staff, residents, and families?

• Are there journalists or good writers in your extended network who can write articles or op-eds on relevant topics?

• Are there relatives who can apply to work or volunteer at the facility? Reach out to your extended network and see who else might be available and eligible to go in to support as social workers, nurses, orderlies, occupational therapists, physical therapists, dieticians, medical specialists, etc. 

• In scenarios where the facility is extremely short-staffed they may allow family members to volunteer to provide some of the basic care for Covid positive residents including feeding, hydrating, assisting with virtual visits, companions for residents, etc.

Assist Staff with Self-Isolating

• Fundraise to get hotel rooms for all staff members. 

• See if anyone in your network has a short-term rental property they can donate to staff during the pandemic. 

Transportation initiatives

Check out this idea from HEROPOOL - can you replicate this model where you are?

Activists

If you’re not connected to anyone in a facility you can do the following things to join the fight to protect residents and workers in long-term care:

• Search on Facebook for support groups of friends and family members of residents and workers of LTC’s. Reach out to admins to see if there is any way to support their initiatives. 

• Reach out to organizations that advocate for the rights of older adults, people with disabilities or caregivers/healthcareworkers to connect with other activists.

  1. Reach out to local seniors groups to see how you can support them and the fight for the residents and workers of long-term care facilities. Check out RECAA in Montreal.
     

• Organize either an in-person or a virtual vigil for the residents and workers who have died of COVID-19 with a strong call to action. During the vigil you can read out the names of individuals. See this #NamingTheLost vigil as an example. Check out this fabulous toolkit from The Caring Majority about how to organize a vigil, how to put out a press release for the vigil, hashtags to use etc. See this example of an online vigil and call to action.

• Help source PPE for frontline staff in long-term care facilities. For example: Are there activist networks who are 3D printing or building face masks? Ask if they can provide for staff at long-term care facilities.

• Extend your mutual aid organizing to do grocery deliveries for workers in LTC facilities. This is important because one of the cornerstones of containing the virus in LTC facilities is ensuring that staff are able to isolate outside of work. Besides having little time to go grocery shopping, exposing themselves at grocery stores only increases the risk of them catching the virus and spreading it within facilities.

• Extend your mutual aid organizing to help cover frontline caregivers’ and staff’s monetary needs - consider sharing part of your stimulus paycheck with nursing home staff, fundraise for emergency grants for frontline workers etc. Many workers in LTC facilities are from marginalized communities. A large percentage are im/migrants and they are unlikely to have full citizenship. They are a vulnerable population to begin with - on top of being paid very low wages to care for older adults and people with disabilities. Many need to work multiple jobs (which was one of the contributing factors for large outbreaks in long term care facilities early on.)

• Assist in the effort to mobilize waves of qualified caregivers, nursing & medical personnel who are willing to go in to work and/or volunteer at long-term care facilities. These measures need to be combined with strict isolation outside the facility and ideally a rigorous testing plan.

• See if a long-term care facility in your area has a COVID-19 fund to get essential items and PPE for the workers that you can donate to or raise money for. For example see this fund.

• Set up a Call-in Event on Facebook or Zoom. The Caring Majority hosted this call-in event where they encouraged people to call their representatives and read a specific script calling for protections for long-term care. Create your own event. Copy and paste the text that they used, modifying the appropriate phone numbers and demands for your area. Encourage participants to photograph themselves participating in this event. 

  • They suggested:  Take a photo of yourself making a call, post it to social media with the text: "I took 5 minutes to call my reps today to tell them I believe #NoBodyIsDisposable. We need dignified care and care jobs urgently and beyond COVID-19. Will you join me at the event in my first comment to make a call today before 5pm with the _______(Name of your group)?" Then post this event in your first comment.

  • Host a Zoom conversation to educate your community about COVID-19 and long-term care facilities or other aspects of care for elderly and disabled individuals.

    1.  Invite a panel of geriatric healthcare experts, local politicians, caregivers, family members, residents and/or organizers to speak. End it with a call to action. 

    2. Host a watch party of documentary films, or start a reading group that delves into this topic. For example- If you haven't seen it, CARE is a poignant documentary following the stories of home care workers and the people they support. The Caring Majority in NY have put together a toolkit, a video training on how to host a watch party.