SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
In smaller communities around the NWT, there is a shared concern about elders being moved to regional centres for long-term care.
Health and Social Services Minister Tom Beaulieu, right, and Sahtu MLA Norman Yakeleya, centre, chat with Philip Codzi of Colville Lake during a visit to Yellowknife's Aven Manor long-term care facility on April 5. - photo courtesy of Norman Yakeleya
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Elders are often moved to places such as Yellowknife, Hay River, Fort Smith and Inuvik.
But the GNWT has some ideas – and is taking some action – to reduce the number of people who have to leave their home communities.
Health and Social Services Minister Tom Beaulieu said assisted-living facilities might be possible in smaller communities, but he doesn't envision long-term-care beds in such communities for patients needing help for virtually every daily activity.
Beaulieu said his department and the NWT Housing Corporation are working together to provide assisted-living facilities to take elders almost to the long-term-care stage.
"The housing corporation is building ones in Fort McPherson, Whati, Fort Liard and Fort Good Hope," he said. "Those are the first ones."
Some construction is expected this year.
Eighteen-bed long-term-care facilities are also being built in Norman Wells and Behchoko, where eight beds will be replaced.
Currently, there are 173 long-term care beds in the NWT.
Beaulieu said his department also intends to train more homecare workers – called resident care aides – or draw upon registered nurses or licensed practical nurses in communities. The idea is to keep seniors in their homes longer before they go to an assisted-living facility or to long-term care.
The department is also working with the housing corporation on an idea to delay individuals leaving their own homes by providing renovations.
Beaulieu said helping a senior stay in his or her home as opposed to going into a long-term-care facility saves $110,000 to $120,000 per year.
The issue of long-term care was behind a visit by Beaulieu and Sahtu MLA Norman Yakeleya to Aven Manor in Yellowknife on April 5.
Yakeleya invited Beaulieu to accompany him after the MLA read concerns in an e-mail from a Deline resident, who told of visiting a Sahtu elder and finding a language barrier and a "dungeon-like" room.
"I did notice that the walls were bare. So we talked a bit about that with the executive director. Maybe putting up some pictures on the walls of the rooms and so on," said Beaulieu, adding the rooms appeared to be very clean.
"My impression was that it is a very good facility," he said, noting long-term care is a very difficult job. "The people seem happy."
Jeff Renaud, executive director of Aven Manor, agrees more could be done to create a home-like atmosphere.
Aven Manor is planning to collect things such as furnishings, wood stoves, furs and drums to help remind people of their homes, he said. "We're going to work really hard to create a more culturally-friendly environment."
Renaud said families of residents can also help provide items such as photographs.
Yakeleya noted, while the one Deline resident had concerns about Aven Manor, he has heard from another Deline resident who thinks it is a great facility.
Both the minister and the MLA agreed with the concern over communicating with residents who might only speak an aboriginal language.
Beaulieu said he will initiate a discussion within his department to see if there is any way to help caregivers at Aven Manor communicate with people who don't speak English.
Yakeleya agrees the language issue concerning elders should be addressed.
"The language barrier is very key to their wellness and well-being," he said. "If they don't have anybody there speaking their language on a consistent basis, then it shuts them down."
For example, he said that during the April 5 visit, they met one Sahtu elder who spoke only Slavey.
"She was telling my assistant in Slavey that, 'It's cold in here,'" he noted. "But she couldn't tell that to the workers because they didn't speak Slavey."
His assistant told employees that the elder found it cold and they got some blankets.
Renaud said language is always a challenge when residents come from such different regions of the NWT. "But it's not been an insurmountable barrier in that we have (employees) that do speak a couple of different dialects."
The executive director said Aven Manor also knows it has to focus on more culturally-relevant programming, noting one idea is to establish a group of volunteers to come in and talk to elders about the news and happenings in their home communities.
Aven Manor also hopes to obtain financial support to get some interpreters, he added. "We're not funded for that, so it makes it difficult for us to provide those services to some of our residents who do come from across the territory."
Yakeleya said moving elders to regional centres for long-term care breaks the family bond and hurts smaller communities.
"The elders are the foundation of our culture and our communities, and they need to be in our communities," he said. "They are our culture. They are the history. They are our libraries to our culture and our traditions."
Beaulieu said that, in the past, there was an assisted-living type of facility in Deline with eight or 10 beds.
"The people in Deline want us to convert back to a facility where their elders can remain in their latter days, but I think it would be difficult for us to provide the same level of care that's been provided at Aven Manor because they have some staff there that are specially trained for that," he said.
Yakeleya said Deline has been asking for two homecare beds to keep elders in the community.
During their visit to Aven Manor, Beaulieu and Yakeleya visited four Sahtu elders from Deline, Colville Lake and Fort Good Hope.
Aven Manor has 29 long-term-care beds. About 35 per cent of the population is from smaller communities outside of Yellowknife and 45 per cent are aboriginal people.
