One thing that COVID-19 has laid bare is just how vulnerable seniors are in our society.
The vast majority of deaths due to the pandemic have occurred in care homes in Burnaby and across Canada. One current outbreak in a Burnaby care home has killed 15 seniors just in December.
And seniors who aren’t getting sick are having to deal with crippling loneliness as care homes have been forced to halt in-person visits.
For some seniors who don’t live in care homes, there are home helpers brought in so they can maintain their independence. My mom, who is pretty capable, has even had someone coming in once a week just to clean, which reduces the chances of injury.
So these home helpers are important. But some families are left struggling with trust issues when strangers are coming into the homes of seniors left vulnerable.
Ian wrote to me about how he fears his father’s home helper has been stealing items from the house. I don’t know if it’s true, but it raises an issue of how to deal with the situation.
For one thing, Ian lives overseas while his dad resides in Burnaby at the family home. Ian’s mother, who has Alzheimer’s, has had to make the transition from home to a care home because she was at risk of wandering away.
It was during this transition that home helpers, including “monitors” who stayed overnight, were brought in until she moved into the care home.
“It was following their departure that my elderly father first noticed that various items had gone missing from the house,” Ian said. “These included an antique solid silver box which was precious family heirloom, as well a portable GPS unit my father always kept in the same spot after using. He was at a loss as to how to pursue his suspicions and decided that since he had no proof of any wrongdoing, other than that nobody else had ever come in the house, he would just forget about it. He said to me when I returned to Canada afterwards, it was a ‘crime of opportunity,’ and he decided to forget about it reluctantly. The lesson here is that even these services which we feel should be trustworthy as they serve people in their times of need are not always so and the user of these ‘helpers’ so to speak must unfortunately be vigilant. Pathetic.”
Ian said he contacted the service that was contracted, but didn’t get an acknowledgement.
Like I said, I don’t know what actually happened but wanted to share because it’s yet another issue that highlights the vulnerability of our aging population.
Follow Chris Campbell on Twitter @shinebox44.
