Irish Examiner view: A chance to improve care for older citizens
How noble it would be if we were to decide to provide world-class care for all our older citizens.
Just as this summer's Tokyo Olympics were deferred until the closing days of next July many other plans or special events have been knocked off-schedule by the rolling, almost unmeasurable pandemic. This can be frustrating, especially if you are a hotelier with a long list of planned but still unconfirmable weddings. However, it may also offer some opportunity if we look hard enough. As ever, most of the clouds have a silver lining even if the trick is to identify it and, if needs be, change tack to realise any potential it might offer.
One of those opportunities centres on how we care for those who because of age, incapacity or simple, spirit-sapping isolation are no longer as independent as they once were. The pandemic has highlighted in the most graphic ways why some of our parents, uncles or aunts, older neighbours or friends speak of the prospect of moving to a nursing home with an undisguised air of dread. Of course, most nursing homes reach standards that seem to allay those concerns but there have been more than enough examples of the other kind too.
In one harrowing instance a home, Oaklands in Listowel, Co Kerry was closed after HSE found it in “chaos” during an outbreak of Covid-19. It must be a warning of sorts that nine residents of that home died because of Covid-19 related issues before this all-too-necessary intervention. There have been other instances in private nursing homes that must set alarm bells ringing too.
Nevertheless, it would be utterly wrong to point the finger at staff at these facilities, many have been and are heroic in an exceptionally threatening environment. It would be dishonest though to pretend that low pay and crowded living conditions - just as with meat plant workers - have not contributed to nursing home deaths. That too many nursing homes had to turn to the HSE and ask for rescue staff at a crisis high point confirms this. Pay and conditions are defined by the need to monetise, to make a profit on one of life's all too frequent ordeals. It seems at least questionable that a society as rich as this should rely on that dynamic, one that puts spreadsheets ahead of comfort blankets, for such a basic, predictable need.
The pandemic enforced delay - for at least a year - of a long-awaited fair deal scheme for homecare offers an unexpected and invaluable opportunity to revise expectations in this area. Though dealing with the pre-nursing home stage of care the scheme is an element of a system in need for reform and one that says a lot about our priorities.
The pandemic has exposed many vulnerabilities in how we order our world but very few combine need and possibility in a way that our nursing home arrangements do. How noble it would be if we were to decide to provide world-class care for all - not just those who can afford the premium seats - and that decisions be made to match need rather than profit obligations? Demographics and resources suggest that this idea is as pressing as it is possible. No-one can say with certainty that the Tokyo Olympics will go ahead in July but it is certain that unless we address these issues we will, in time, pay the price of our selfish indifference.
