CRITIQUE of the report “The Best of Care” released to the public in February 2012 re the “Inquiry into Seniors Care in BC” launched by the Ombudsperson in 2008.
The Ombudsperson’s report, The Best of Care, in all of its hundreds of pages and four years in the making, makes virtually no mention of the rampant, systemic and deliberate abuse of elderly people and their loved ones by institutional staff and public agencies and authorities.
Despite all the hoopla and attention given to the introduction of a Residents’ Bill of Rights by the Ombud and the BC government mandating that the Rights poster be put up in every care facility, residents in care facilities across BC continue to be brutally abused by institutional staff, to have their rights and freedoms taken away from them illegally, and to have control of their assets and legal authority over their person taken over by the government.
The Ombudsperson states in her report (Overview, p.98) The quality of care that seniors receive in residential care facilities is the most significant concern for residents and their families. Yet, in the Ombudsperson’s website the list of Case Summaries, a representative sampling of the cases that her office handled shows that of the 16 representative cases described, only one case was about poor care or abuse by institutional staff.
Why is institutional elder abuse being ignored?
Elderly people and their families and friends are routinely intimidated, screamed at, threatened, and banned. Parents and children prevented from seeing one another. People who’ve been friends for decades suddenly banned from seeing each other because care facility staff don’t want them around. Why would two eighty-year-olds not be allowed to continue their decades-long relationship? Residents live in fear of what staff will do to them when visitors leave the facility. Care facility staff refuse to let resident’s lawyers visit them to establish Representation Agreements. Health Authority officials refuse to respond to requests for help in addressing urgent life-and-death mistreatment by care facility staff. These are just a few examples of what is going on right now under our noses, and yet to read the Ombud’s report, you’d think there was no institutional abuse.
As elder advocates who have had personal experience and knowledge of the horrific abuses perpetrated against residents in BC’s care facilities, and who have worked with many families across the province, we have seen and have documented proof of the abuses, the intimidation, the threats, the horrific acts that are occurring. In several of the Ombudsman’s public forums in 2008 we listened to the compelling horror stories of elderly spouses telling of how nursing staff would take them into storage closets and scream at them because they didn’t want the spouse to keep coming in to help feed their loved one at meal times. How doctors would ignore resident and family pleas to stop drugging them. In many of the cases we’ve worked on, requests for help sent to the Ombudsperson were often ignored or turned away without investigation. On the few occasions that her office looked into cases, she simply rubber-stamped approval of abuses by institutional staff, health authorities and public agencies. She is well aware of the horrific abuses of residents by staff and authorities.
So, why is there virtually no mention of institutional elder abuse in her report?
Most acts that we consider to be elder abuse fall under the Criminal Code of Canada – assault, theft, fraud, kidnapping, murder. Are seniors sub-human, do they no longer qualify for protection under our country’s laws? It seems so because there is no enforcement of our laws when these crimes are committed by institutional staff and public authorities.
Finding 23 of the Ombudsperson’s report in “The Best of Care” (Overview, p. 152) states:
The Ministry of Health does not require care staff to report information indicating seniors receiving home support, assisted living or residential care services are being abused or neglected.
The Ombudsperson’s recommendation to address this outrageous fact, R27:
The Ministry of Health take the necessary steps to require staff providing care to seniors to report abuse… to the regional health authority.
News flash to Ombud: care staff & health authorities often are the abusers
That lovely Residents’ Bill of Rights? Meaningless. There are no penalties associated with breaking the Residents’ Bill of Rights law. So staff know perfectly well that they face no consequences for anything they might do to a vulnerable resident when no one is looking. Conscientious staff (and there are some) risk threats and loss of their jobs if they report. A nurse who reported witnessing another staff member assaulting a patient was harassed by management to such a degree that he sought a lawyer to protect himself from his employer … and from his union, who simply closed ranks against this nurse to protect the perpetrator of this heinous crime.
People are told go to a lawyer, get a Representation Agreement and a Care Directive and it will protect them. Not really. That’s a scam by the legal industry that is easily gotten around by the health care industry if they want to. Across BC, care facility staff and health authorities routinely ignore Representation Agreements and Powers of Attorney, and they lie to seniors and their families about their legal rights, to enable them to (illegally) assume control of the elderly person.
If the person or the family tries to establish their legal authority, the staff simply ask a doctor to assess the person for capability, and with the stroke of a pen the senior is determined to be incapable – sometimes even without the doctor ever having met the person. Then the care facility or health authority brings in the Public Guardian and Trustee to have the PGT take over legal authority for the person and their estate. This is happening over and over and over across BC.
A woman who was the legal representative for her mother was, for two years straight, ignored, obstructed, intimidated, misled and lied to by the care facility and the health authority. In letters to her, the health authority falsely states that her Representation Agreement did not give her authority to move her mother out of the care facility she was in. A couple, concerned about the appointment of a guardian (committee) for an elderly parent, met with the Public Guardian & Trustee. The PGT declined to take action against the committee. When asked what it would take for the PGT to intervene to protect an elderly person from the actions of a committee, the PGT official said that the guardian would have to be caught in the act of killing the elderly person before they or anyone would take action.
What will it take to stop the epidemic of institutional elder abuse in BC’s residential care system?
♦
UPDATE: APRIL 13, 2012
Elder advocate attacked for distributing institutional elder abuse info
One of our volunteers attended a public forum on the Inquiry into Seniors Care in BC on April 12, 2012 in Parksville, BC. This is her account of events.
Last night I attended a public forum in Parksville to hear BC’s Ombudsperson (Kim Carter) and a health care union policy analyst (Marcy Cohen, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives) speak about the report on the Inquiry into Seniors Care in BC. I handed out a critique of the report (called The Best of Care) and the pamphlet “It’s Open Season on Elderly People in Canada”, plus an article published in the April 2012 Focus magazine entitled “Forced drugging of seniors still increasing”.
An uproar ensued, or should I say unfolded, as the evening progressed. The seniors gratefully took the info, but the health care workers and event organizers (community groups working closely with the unions) tried to shut me down. They told me I shouldn’t be handing the pamphlets out, and that they were disgusted by the information. An HEU (health employee union) rep photographed me, and one person angrily ripped the pamphlets up and tossed them at me. When I told them that these problems hurt staff too, and that I’d organized a letter-writing campaign when Gordon Campbell wiped out the HEU contract, it made no difference to them. They weren’t interested in any dialogue, just in suppressing my information.
Near the end of the evening (after the Ombudsperson had left) one of the health care workers went to the mic to complain about me handing out information. She accused me of trying to prevent them (health care workers) from getting the support they deserve for “advocating on behalf of seniors”. I then spoke for the first time – in response to this health care worker’s comments – revealing to the audience the intimidation I’d faced during the forum. I stood my ground on behalf of sharing information to help elderly victims of institutional elder abuse, and said it was wrong in a democratic country to try to prevent me from sharing information in a peaceful and respectful manner. I got a loud burst of applause from the seniors for my remarks.
The aggressive intimidation was very telling and familiar, as was their fierce determination to keep information from the public. That’s what so many elderly residents and families face in BC’s residential care system daily (if they’re lucky enough not to have been banned from visiting their loved ones).
The Focus magazine article and the pamphlet “It’s Open Season on the Elderly in Canada” are shown below.
♦
ROB WIPOND, FOCUS Magazine – APRIL 2012
I WAS READING THE CORONER’S REPORT on Kathleen Palamarek and something didn’t seem right. I’d been following her story since 2006. This was a diminutive, timid, 88-year-old nursing home resident with dementia and a heart condition, who’d been somewhat controversially diagnosed with dementia-related psychosis. She’d died of a heart attack. The coroner had found the antipsychotic olanzapine in her body.
Palamarek hadn’t been taking olanzapine willingly; she’d frequently complained about feeling woozy and “drugged up.” She couldn’t refuse the drug, though, because her doctors had declared her incapable and, when she’d protested, they’d certified her under BC’s Mental Health Act (MHA). Antipsychotics are being used increasingly in seniors’ homes as chemical restraints to pacify and control people. But Health Canada has issued the highest possible warnings to doctors that antipsychotics are “not approved for the treatment of patients with dementia-related psychosis” and that these powerful tranquillizers have been linked to a near-doubling of death rates in the elderly, mostly from heart attacks.
Yet here’s what coroner Stan Lajoie wrote about Kathleen Palamarek’s heart attack: “Death was clearly and unequivocally due to natural causes.” There was not so much as a hint anywhere in his seven-page report that her heart attack might have been linked to a drug known to dramatically increase heart attacks in the heart-weakened elderly. Why?
While I investigated that, new reports revealed in sharper detail the close relationships between BC’s staggering levels of antipsychotics use, and our province’s lack of legal protections for seniors’ basic human rights.
Focus last year uncovered that 47.3 percent of BC seniors’ home residents were being given antipsychotics, above the US and Canadian average of 26 percent, and four times the rate in Hong Kong. A December, 2011 BC Health Ministry report showed rates still climbing: 50.3 percent are now being given antipsychotics. Vancouver Island is highest at 51.5 percent. … http://focusonline.ca/?q=node/356
♦
PAMPHLET
It’s Open Season on elderly people in Canada… abused, harmed and helpless in our health care system
INVERMERE (BC) VALLEY ECHO – Apr 2012: Family questions access at seniors home Staff at Columbia House, a residential care facility operated by the Interior Health Authority are denying family and friends access to Jean Wilder, ignoring legal authority held by the family, refusing to provide any information about medical care and treatment. The family is being intimidated by care facility staff. Only Mrs. Wilder’s daughter is permitted to visit her and those visits must be in front of a staff member (guard) present all the time. No one (not even her daughter) is permitted to enter Mrs. Wilder’s room. Columbia House staff refused to permit Mrs. Wilder’s lawyer to enter the facility to finalize a Representation Agreement that she had requested. Shortly after, the care facility doctor committed Mrs. Wilder under BC’s Mental Health Act, and the health authority applied to the Public Guardian and Trustee to assume legal control of Mrs. Wilder’s estate and person. Her family and friends are concerned that Mrs. Wilder is now being kept drugged to enable the health authority to take her legal rights away from her and her family.
http://www.invermerevalleyecho.com/news/146010245.html
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=313780938689495
TORONTO SUN – Sep 2011: Man chained to hospital bed for 7 hours A 79-year-old man was assaulted by two hospital guards while waiting at the admissions desk to pick up his prescriptions before being discharged. He was thrown hard onto the railing of a bed in an examination room, shackled and left for 7 hours without food, water or medical attention. He had been in hospital for treatment of a heart condition, and is a diabetic. Ron Meredith was committed under Ontario’s mental health act although he is of sound mind. Mr. Meredith was shocked at the instantaneous belligerence of the guards who resisted any effort to explain his purpose. A former police officer, he was astounded that they could act with such impunity.
http://www.torontosun.com/2011/09/20/senior-wants-hospital-to-take-action
CT WATCHDOG – January – May 2011: Narcotic poisoning a bitter prescription An elderly VICTORIA, BC woman, who was the subject of a malicious court action to declare her incapable, died under suspicious circumstances in a nursing home that was already under police investigation for suspected attempted murder several months earlier of the same woman by morphine overdose and withholding of food and water. The woman was not terminally ill, nor did she have pain that required morphine. The elderly woman was being held in the nursing home after having been involuntarily apprehended fraudulently by the Vancouver Island Health Authority, in collaboration with her sons and their lawyer who sought her incarceration for the purposes of gaining legal advantage in a court case. The woman’s sons falsely alleged that her daughter was mentally ill and dangerous to their mother — a common ploy used in “Granny Snatching” – the fraudulent apprehension & detention of elderly people.
http://ctwatchdog.com/2011/01/12/assisted-suicide-or-granny-snatching-liberty-or-death
http://ctwatchdog.com/2011/03/30/granny-snatching-narcotic-poisoning-a-bitter-prescription
OCTOBER 1, 2011 Connecticut’s new law came into effect, making it a criminal offense when a person (A) willfully makes a fraudulent or malicious report, (B) conspires with another person to make or cause to be made such report, or (C) willfully testifies falsely in any administrative or judicial proceeding arising from such report as to the abuse, neglect, exploitation or abandonment of, or need of protective services for, an elderly person. [Malicious claims of elder abuse against other family members who may protect an elderly person is a preferred means of assuming legal domain over that elderly person for the purposes of gaining control of their person and their assets.]
FOCUS MAGAZINE – VICTORIA, BC July 2011: Kathleen’s demise – a cautionary tale Calls for a public inquiry into the suspicious death of the Victoria, BC woman noted in the above stories include concerns about the legal, law enforcement and justice systems. The health authorities, police and coroner’s office have also been implicated in her death and cover-up of the actions of the institution/doctors and public officials. This woman’s case is not unique; others are too fearful to risk going public.
http://www.focusonline.ca/?q=node/249 and
http://focusonline.ca/?q=node/356 Forced drugging of seniors still increasing, April 2012
CBC Go Public – ABBOTSFORD, BC February 2011: BC senior drugged against family’s wishes Eighty-three-year-old Hilda Penner was forced by the Health Authority into an institution, where she was immediately drugged by staff/doctors at a nursing home – without the knowledge or permission of her two daughters who had Representation Agreements and Power of Attorney for their mother. The daughters had specifically forbidden the use of antipsychotic medications. Suffering a seizure which doctors conceded likely had been caused by these unapproved drugs, Hilda Penner was then hospitalized. Doctors there, annoyed by the questions of her daughters, used the BC’s draconian Mental Health Act to have their mother fraudulently committed. Daughters feared they would be banned. BC’s Public Guardian and Trustee attempted to wrestle legal control from the daughters. Health Authority staff lied to, and about, the sisters, in an effort to discredit them (a common tactic). Hilda Penner died a short while later. Hilda Penner’s death was the impetus for the BC government’s Review of Antipsychotic Drugs in BC’s Residential Care Facilities published in Dec 2011. The Review Committee chose to suppress her identity and much of the evidence presented by her family. BC’s care facilities continue to drug residents at rates that are among the highest in the world.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2011/02/07/bc-druggedseniors.html
and http://asa-fea.blogspot.com/
MACLEANS MAGAZINE – HAMILTON, Ontario August 2011: Stealing from mom and dad An 82-year-old woman was fraudulently incarcerated in a psychiatric institution when her son convinced a doctor that his mother was mentally ill. The woman’s financial advisor knowing the woman was quite capable “convinced” the doctor to release the elderly woman. She was freed but the son absconded with his mother’s assets, unpunished. The article says the mother is powerless to seek redress or compensation, but ignores the fact that authorities are not enforcing existing laws.
http://www2.macleans.ca/2011/07/14/stealing-from-mom-and-dad/
CBC – KAMLOOPS, BC Jan 2010: Court bans secret video forever The BC Supreme Court grants a court order that a video of staff striking a 90-year-old man in a Kamloops nursing home be banned forever and that no one is permitted to even describe what occurs on the video which was obtained by family members with a hidden camera. The Interior Health Authority said that they sought the court order “to protect staff privacy”. The elderly man died days later. No police investigation, no consequences for staff at all.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2005/04/08/senior-050408.html and
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/story.html?id=09f3002b-6fd8-4a93-b180-2c63ba2f431a&p=2 and
http://www.kamloopsnews.ca/article/20100106/KAMLOOPS0101/301069970/0/KAMLOOPS10
CBC – TRAIL, BC Sep 2010 BC man loses right to care for wife George Brent, 83, wants to take his 81-year-old wife, Delores, home to look after her but the health authority says he can’t do that. The Interior Health Authority has stripped his right to look after his wife, putting him in financial straits as a consequence. Brent and his daughter say they visited Delores every day and found her in harsh, “sub-standard” conditions. “ If a child was treated in the same way … the parents would have the children taken from them,” George Brent said.
Brent says his wife’s condition deteriorated.
Brent complained to Interior Health (IH) and when the health authority started billing him for Delores’s care, he decided to protest by not paying the bills. At that point hospital doctors assessed Delores as incapable of managing her affairs which set in motion a series of legal measures that put B.C.’s Public Guardian and Trustee in charge of her financial affairs. This overrode the power of attorney Delores signed to give her husband the same powers.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2010/09/06/bc-rightsremoved.html
Sandra Finlay THE BATTLES – SASKATOON, SK July 2009 This menacing trend of health care facilities stripping people of their legal rights isn’t limited to the so-called “feeble” elderly. A middle-aged woman, Sandra Finley, an environmental researcher, writer, and member of the University of Saskatchewan Senate was unlawfully apprehended while seeking treatment at a Saskatoon hospital. http://sandrafinley.ca/?p=1101
Excerpt: 3. Documentary “Making a Killing, the Untold Story of Psychotropic Drugs”. Many thanks to Jackie from Ohio for sending it in. This subject is of special interest to me…
I went to a walk-in clinic after 3 days of stab-like pains in my side. An x-ray showed a large amount of fluid on my lung. The doctor didn’t know what to do, and recommended that I come back when doctor so-and-so was on duty, which we jointly determined would be in two days’ time. I was very sick but I had a full day to obtain information. That was a mistake! As a consequence I asked too many questions of the “experts”, the doctors. Following a Friday afternoon procession of doctors and tests and no answers, I signed a form to get me out of the hospital and went home to do more research. A day later the pain worsened so I returned to the hospital where a psychiatrist got hold of me. She determined that I thought I knew more than she did and was hence a danger to myself. Unbeknownst to me, she diagnosed me as manic, I was forcibly injected with anti-psychotic drugs which caused permanent amnesia of a period of time and I was forced to take more anti-psychotic drugs in pill form, over the next days while I was forcibly confined in the Psychiatric Ward. … The doctor (Donna Malcolm) stopped the immediate appeal route that is available to people who get locked up in a psychiatric ward by claiming that I had progressed so well under her care that I no longer needed to be locked up, I was being released. … The College of Physicians and Surgeons later stood by the doctor, in spite of …
Big Money is being made by residential care nursing home developers and operators (private, public & non-profit societies alike), doctors, drug companies and lawyers – by harming the health, stripping the legal rights and assuming the assets of people in their “Golden Years”. BC’s public agencies, health care regulatory bodies and authorities ignore the pleas of elderly victims and their loved ones despite having a mandate to protect the elderly and prevent such atrocities.
Contact MLAs & MPs
STOP Institutional Elder Abuse in British Columbia – Canada
