Several news sources, including the Canadian Press and CTV.ca, are reporting that Minna Mettinen-Kekalainen’s home care will resume this coming Monday (February 2, 2009).
As I said, there are several reports, but it’s only fitting to highlight the Sudbury Star article by Carol Mulligan. Mulligan originally broke this story and continued to push it into the public consciousness.
From the story:
Starting Monday, a Sudbury woman suffering from Lou Gehrig’s disease will begin receiving the home nursing care she needs.
The North East Community Care Access Centre will resume providing nursing and personal support to Minna Mettinen-Kekalainen, 42.
Mettinen-Kekalainen has been involved in a public battle with the North East CCAC about her home care. The woman, who has an autism spectrum disorder called Asperger syndrome, has not received help at home from the agency for months after nurses caring for her complained about her behaviour.
Nickel Belt MPP France Gelinas said Tuesday nurses have been lined up to care for Mettinen-Kekalainen starting Feb. 2.
Like others with Asperger’s, Mettinen-Kekalainen experiences some difficulty with interpersonal communication, and her power of attorney, Jason Bushie, has said that can lead to misunderstandings with her caregivers and others.
Gelinas, the New Democrats’ Health critic, got involved in Mettinen- Kekalainen’s case last week. Sudbury MPP Rick Bartolucci’s constituency staff had been working on the case for weeks.
Gelinas said it was a case of “all hands on deck” being able to resolve the dispute between the woman and the agency.
“I’m not the Lone Ranger” riding in to the rescue, she said.
The MPP said the North East CCAC worked hard as well to come to an agreement with Mettinen-Kekalainen.
Although they’re not mentioned in the story, I am sure that the activists, bloggers and students that found many ways to focus attention on Minna’s situation helped grease the wheels of progress as well. That, and the resulting political pressure.
Note to Canadian activists. The CTV.ca article linked at the beginning of this post includes more comments from France Gelinas that bear careful attention. I don’t live in Canada and am unable to evaluate for myself her evaluation of home care in Ontario. But it looks like this person could be an important ally on the issues of community-based support and care.
This from the CTV.ca article:
Now that the matter is settled, Ontario needs to take a hard look at its home-care system, Gelinas said.
“In the short-term I wanted to get Minna some care,” she said.
“We’ve achieved that goal and that was the prime motivator, but you have to look back and learn from those tragic incidents as to how do you change things so it never happens again.”
Former Progressive Conservative premier Mike Harris brought in competitive bidding for home care in the 1990s in an effort to reduce the cost for taxpayers, Gelinas said.
Before that, the Victorian Order of Nurses and other charitable organizations had government funding and provided excellent home care, Gelinas said. Now, the for-profit companies Gelinas is aware of pay low wages and have no benefits or pension plans, which does little to attract top-quality nurses, she said.
“There has to be policy change in the way home-care services are delivered in this province,” Gelinas said.
“Otherwise there will be more and more Minnas out there, and this is not acceptable.”
Bottom line for today, though, is that we won one!
Take some time to savor that.
Maybe five minutes.
Then get back to work. (smile)
Hats off to everyone who worked so hard to get the word out and keep the pressure up. –Stephen Drake