The minister responsible for seniors, Sonia Bélanger, heard the message from the commissioner of health and well-being: “funding must be corrected” in home support, she said on Wednesday.
She was reacting to the tabling, on Tuesday, of the second volume of Commissioner Joanne Castonguay’s report on home care and support services. This raises several shortcomings in the funding and delivery of these services in Quebec.
“With the aging of the population, home support services are a must,” said Ms.me Bélanger in the moments preceding a meeting of the Council of Ministers, Wednesday.
According to Commissioner Castonguay’s report, Quebec is still a dunce compared to other Canadian provinces when it comes to loosening the purse strings to provide home support. In 2021-2022, the expenditures allocated to this envelope occupied 4.8% of the entire health budget.
Mme Bélanger recognizes that there has been a historical “underinvestment” in this area, even if the last governments have gradually reinvested in home care. “We must correct, indeed, the financing”, affirmed the minister of the Coalition avenir Québec, Wednesday.
However, it is above all the provision of services itself that must be reviewed, according to Ms.me Belanger. “There is something important that we must do, that we have not done yet and that I will do: that is to say, reorganize the work,” he said. she says.
In her report, Commissioner Castonguay points to the lack of human resources in the health and social services network. According to her, “the current level of resources in the programs of [soins à domicile ne permet] not to ensure home support for the majority of the population aged 65 and over”.
In a press scrum on Wednesday, she admitted some inefficiency in administrative work, travel and home care delivery. “All of this needs to be reorganized,” she said. “I had the opportunity to meet the presidents and general managers of the establishments to give my alignments. […] They have their target to hit. »
To provide better tools for professionals providing care at home, Mme Bélanger hopes to be able to “introduce information technologies” to the network. It will soon launch “major work reorganization projects. “We have to work differently. »
Further details will follow.