In Brittany, hundreds of mayors responsible for public nursing homes in their municipalities are seeing their deficits explode. Faced with this situation, they decided to join forces to request more funding from the State.
In Brittany, many mayors are launching the revolt of rural nursing homes. It is the managers of these public structures who are drowning in expenses, between the bonuses granted to nursing home employees which they must partly finance and inflation. Result: the deficits announced for this year 2023 are soaring and these elected officials are worried. They decided to join forces and attack the state to demand more funding.
160,000 euros deficit at the Plouaret nursing home, “I cried about it”
With her hat as president of the CCAS, the social action committee, the mayor of Plouaret Annie-Bras-Denis is responsible for the public nursing home. An energetic woman of character, but when she had to vote on the budget and the deficit of the nursing home last year, “I cried”she remembers. “I told myself it’s not possible, because we had made restructuring efforts and despite everything we were going to show a deficit of 150,000 euros. That’s not possible.”
A huge sum for this small nursing home of less than 60 residents. First, because the State has decided to grant bonuses Old age and Ségur de la Santé to nursing home employees, but does not pay them in full. “In fact, he only provided financial compensation of around 80%. So as our CCAS are very small structures, they are incapable of absorbing these sums”the remaining 20%, specifies Annie-Bras-Denis.
With inflation, bills climb
The second reason is inflation, the rise in food prices in particular and the rise in the cost of energy. Especially since in the Ephad, we heat up a lot, ultimately resulting in skyrocketing bills, as Caroline Bernad, the director of the Ehpad, explains: “We had the unpleasant surprise of receiving an electricity bill in May, for the period from January to mid-May, of almost 30,000 euros.” “We didn’t have the cash to pay for it, she specifies, so we put it on hold. It’s not that we don’t want to, but we don’t have the capacity at the moment.”
The director assures that he “there is no fat”, in expenses. And making more savings, having fewer staff, would mean reducing the comfort of residents.
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One solution would be to increase rates for residents. Today they pay around 2,000 euros per month, and more would be very complicated, confirms Henriette, 100 years old: “Pay more? Oh no, 2,000 euros per month, you know, you have to take them out anyway.”
So to replenish the nursing home’s coffers, volunteer residents regularly sell pancakes in the markets. “We make around fifteen kilos of dough and it brings us around 400 euros each time. It may not be a lot, but it’s a drop in the ocean that can still help them”testify Françoise Le Moullec and Martine Le Quéré.
“We always think about the elderly, because if there is no more Ephad, where will they go? So we have to help them, as best we can.”
Françoise Le Moullec and Martine Le Quéréat franceinfo
The catastrophic financial situation of this nursing home is not an isolated phenomenon; the mayor of Plouaret realized this while discussing it with other elected officials from neighboring municipalities. Together, they realized that their nursing homes, public and rural, were all in the red. So they created a collective which spread throughout Brittany and entered into “resistance”.
The public meetings organized are in full swing, again last week with two meetings and the presence of around a hundred municipalities. Each one lists the financial difficulties of their nursing home: “The deficit programmed for the year 2023 is 184,000 euros”, “The deficit sends shivers down our spines, it’s close to 570,000 euros”or “We are like all of you here, we have a deficit of 177,000 euros.” “I don’t want to reach the end of the year without being able to pay my staff, it’s something that worries me,” adds this last elected official.
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The extensions of the Regional Health Agency and the Department, which are the financiers of the Old age, are not sufficient. For them, the State is failing. “We stop funding and we tell communities or mayors ‘go get on with it’. We are human, we seek nothing other than to do what is necessary for our elderly and without the funding, we cannot ‘won’t make it’alarms Jean-Louis Even, mayor of La Roche-Jaudy.
So the mayors decided to rebel. The solution according to them is to take the State to court, “to hold them accountable and the only way we know is through the court, to support the movement that is being set up”, specifies Gérard Daboudet, the mayor of Mené. Attacking the State means perpetuating the future of these small public nursing homes for Xavier Compain, the mayor of Plouha: “In Brittany, we ask the question of the model. Rural territory for the most part, small agricultural retreats, here there are few Cacharels [la marque]so there are very few homes for 6,000 euros.”
In the immediate future, these mayors, many of whom can no longer pay their nursing home bills, hope that their electricity and heating will not be cut off this winter.