warehousing disabled people in long-term care homes needs to stop. instead, nationalize home care.

the failures in both private and publicly funded long-term care (ltc) homes in canada have led to  15,000 covid-19 deaths . calls to reform ltc  through nationalization  have become widespread, garnering  support from unions ,  national advocacy organizations  and  political parties .

while ltc is often considered to be a necessary institution to support the complex medical care needs of seniors, ltc facilities are used  to warehouse disabled people who require 24-hour care, regardless of age . and nationalizing ltc fails to adequately resolve the ableism of warehousing disabled people, ultimately maintaining the unjust and inadequate structures of care.

ltc  is debilitating for disabled people  who are forced to rely on institutionalized daily care. it is time to abolish ltc in canada.

warehousing disabled people

at the forefront of the call to abolish ltc facilities in canada is the  disability justice network of ontario , a disability-run organization based out of hamilton that advocates for accessible and fulfilling living conditions for disabled people.

its most recent  campaign to abolish ltc  seeks legislative action to deinstitutionalize the nearly  200,000 disabled people (including 260 children under the age of 18)  living in ltc and begin closing all institutions with records of harm and violence.

the government’s ongoing reliance to confine intellectually, developmentally and physically disabled young people in ltc facilities has been met with protest by the system’s young disabled occupants who demand deinstitutionalization — like jonathan marchand  in québec,  vicky levack  in nova scotia and  tyson sylvester  in manitoba.

in june 2018,  sylvester  constructed a prison cell in downtown winnipeg to protest the way in which the manitoba care system “locked him out of his own life.”

marchand similarly camped out in a makeshift cage on the lawn of québec’s national assembly in august 2020, and in august 2021 was able to  move into his own apartment after receiving in-home support.

in addition to the urgent calls for change coming from young disabled people caged in ltc institutions, the deplorable living and working conditions of ltc facilities in canada has also been well documented in over  150 scathing reports .

the scope of  death recorded in ltc facilities  during the pandemic is yet another marker of the system’s inability to provide the necessary care and support for its wide-ranging clients. however, the harm experienced by older and younger disabled people who continue to live in these spaces deserves action as much as condemnation.

prisons by a different name

nationalizing ltc, sometimes referred to as publicizing the system, would undoubtedly take profits out of ltc and may create system-wide changes to improve residents’ conditions. however, these calls ignore the fundamental character of ltc facilities as an  extension of the carceral state , essentially prisons by a different name.

for example, ltc facilities frequently use  carceral mechanisms of control  such as the use of psychotropic medication, locking residents in their rooms and the use of physical restraints.

in order to create a national home care program, workers need higher pay, job security and robust benefits. when working conditions are poor, staff shortages will occur whether due to low pay, precarious hours and physically demanding work, or because of workplace injury or illness (as with  workplace covid-19 exposure ).

staffing shortages mean that disabled people  do not receive adequate or consistent care , resulting in malnutrition, dehydration or untreated bed sores. abolishing ltc is about establishing better working and living conditions for both care workers and disabled people.

philosopher shelley tremain refers to publicly owned nursing homes as  the “window-dressing” of the nursing home industrial complex that “operates in the service of ableism, ageism and racism.”

in canada, solidarity is building between prison abolitionist movements and disability justice over the  shared injustices of incarceration in prisons and disabled people’s institutional confinement . these movements help us build the political will necessary to move toward a world with no more ltc institutions.

this article is republished from the conversation under a creative commons license. read the   original article .

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warehousing disabled people in long-term care homes needs to stop. instead, nationalize home care.

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