Elder care | The island recipe

The Anglophone community of the Magdalen Islands has developed a unique approach in Quebec to allow seniors to stay at home with good support. At the heart of the initiative: the relatives who help them at home are paid by the CISSS. The success is such that a residence for seniors had to close for lack of patients.

Mathieu Perreault
The Press

(Grosse-Île, Quebec) When Kerry Dickson’s mother began to feel less well, at age 95, he began to spend all his nights at her bedside, in the family home where he had grown up. It was in 2019.

“I spent the evening with her, on my way home from work,” says the 64-year-old hairdresser from Grosse-Île, one of the two English-speaking islands of the Magdalen Islands. “At 8 a.m., a cousin of my mother arrived. I slept a little and went to work. »

This cousin was paid by L’Essentiel, a social economy organization in the Magdalen Islands. This scenario is common in Grosse-Île, where the elderly end up almost all their days at home — contrary to what is observed elsewhere in Quebec.

“A few years ago, the only seniors’ residence on Grosse-Île closed because it wasn’t fully occupied,” explains Helena Burke, executive director of the Conseil des anglophones madelinots (CAMI).

The Integrated Health and Social Services Center (CISSS) pays a large part of the salary of these people.

The particularity of Grosse-Île extends to the funeral. The deceased are laid out in their own homes, and the community digs the graves themselves. The only convenience store on the island is closed during the funeral, and until recently, the school was too.

A quarter of the 460 inhabitants of Grosse-Île are over 65, and year after year, 50 to 75 of them receive help from CAMI. Only two seniors from Grosse-Île are in residence on another island in the archipelago, due to severe dementia which makes home care too heavy, according to Ms.^me Burke.

“When CAMI recommends someone who will be paid to help a senior, we give him a few days of training,” explains Roméo Deraspe, general manager of L’Essentiel, located in Cap-aux-Meules. L’Essentiel supports nearly 400 Madelinots, including a number varying from 5 to 15 in Grosse-Île, depending on requests and deaths.

A frequent scenario is that one of the children of the elderly people of Grosse-Île, often a girl, lives with them and obtains respite paid by L’Essentiel to go shopping. Many people in Grosse-Île work nine weeks a year, usually at the lobster canning plant.

This is the case of Jane Clarke, who has lived for five years with her mother Irma, 92 years old.

“During the nine weeks of work at the factory, someone comes every day to take care of my mother,” says Ms.^me Clarke. The rest of the time I have help from my sister when I have to go out for errands. And for social life? “We are a few friends in the same situation. We meet with our mothers for card games. For the holidays, it is more difficult. Last year, I was lucky, I was able to have two people who stayed alternately for a week with my mother. I went to see my brother in Prince Edward Island. »

Helicopter

CAMI also takes care of a dozen elderly people on Entry Island, the only one in the archipelago not connected to the others by a road. “I go there by boat or by helicopter when the seas are bad,” says Robin Aitkens, the CAMI volunteer who takes care of Entry Island. “Generally, we find people from their family to help them stay at home. For example, I have an 80-year-old lady who still lives in her house with her daughter. A niece paid by L’Essentiel comes to give her a bath and keep her company when her daughter has to go to Cap-aux-Meules. »

Two nurses and a secretary from the CLSC de Grosse-Île complete the organization chart of this unusual approach in Quebec. In the province, 20% of people over 75 and 40% of people over 85 live in residences or reception centres. “We have two nurses, they each do a week in a row, says M^me Burke. One lives next door to the Grande-Entrée, the other lives in an apartment above the CLSC during her week. The secretary also helps a lot with making appointments and translating. »

The next challenges are to teach hospital and CHSLD caregivers to communicate with their unilingual English-speaking patients, and to recruit home helpers from elsewhere in Canada.

“We have English courses for caregivers given by McGill University,” says Ms.^me Burke. For recruitment elsewhere in the country or abroad, one problem is housing. People here build themselves, we don’t have a lot of rental apartments. And recent restrictions on buildable areas complicate matters. »