In time of crises, this, is when the policies gets, tested, and, they all went, BUST, off of the Front Page Sections, translated…
Burned on Both Ends of the Outbreak, & the Shortage of Employees, the Heaviness of Burden of Care Returned Back to the Families, & There's the Case of the Elderly Woman Who's Demented Getting Abandoned by Her Own Next-of-Kin
Up to last week, there's been close to forty-percent of residents in the long-term care facilities who'd contracted MERS-CoV as the virus started taking over the residents of the nursing homes locally, with the death rate of 2.6-percent. Although the government provided the free quick scan kits, hoping to get the contracted residents of nursing homes found in time, to get them treated, to administer the medications, but, a lot of the facilities are on edge, due to the last wave of pandemic, they'd already set up their own policies of "not taking the new residents", which puts the burdens of caretaking back to the families.
The C.E.O. of Long-Term-Care Development Association, Yu stated that "the facilities can't withstand any cases of contraction now", that the facilities are still operating on the "clearing all the cases" mode, because of the last few waves of spread of contraction, when someone contracts, not only the health of the elderly get impacted, there would be the limited manpower too, although they'd set up the systems now, but, the nursing homes are conservative over taking in the new residents, and they would normally wait until the last contracted elderly gets out of quarantine, then, considering taking in more new residents.
Yu told, that the rules now, is that the residents on the day of admitting in, if they have a negative scan result, then they will be admitted, and yet, a lot of the facilities raised up the restrictions, demanded that the prospect residents have a two-days negative PCR test. This restriction had upset the families, before the elders get placed into the homes, there were the problems surfacing.
And, the loss of personnel to look after the elderly population also caused the lacking in motivations for the nursing homes to take on new residents. The C.E.O. of Taiwan Nursing Home Foundation, Chou stated, that in recent years, the employees are attracted by the benefits of the policies of Long-Term Care 2.0, and started becoming the homecare provider workers, causing the nursing homes to become reliant on the foreign nurses' aides, and the outbreaks had caused the people to not come to Taiwan to work. Lacking in the help, even if the nursing homes wanted to take on more residents, they don't dare, and in the end, it's still the families of the elderly who needed around the clock care who end up suffering the most.
Chen of the R.O.C. Home Caretaker Foundation stated, that the cases of residents are now, affected by the outbreaks, becoming ever the more unstable, a lot of the families are on their own to come up with the means that worked, and recently, there'd been a wave of "deserting the elderly".
A younger woman needed to care for her demented elderly mother, and her two young physically handicapped children at the same time, but because she'd not qualified for the low-income assistance, she was stressed out by the pressures of economics, and it'd forced her to run away from her responsibilities of caring for her young and her own mother, and in the end, social services stepped in, placed the two children, and, put the elderly demented mother into the daycare programs.
Chen believe, that the outbreaks of MERS-CoV only made the problems in long-term care in the country more apparent, as there's the lacking of foreign nurses' aides, could the nursing homes make up for it, we need to speed up on the preparations.
Wu of the assistant department manager of long-term care of the Department of Social Welfare stated, that the workers' number in the residential nursing homes, the caretakers are currently stable, but, encouraging that the long-term care can use the higher wages, working with the nursing programs of universities, to attract the workers. And suggested that the families use the long-term care program for the at-home care, or the community-oriented care programs, and that they can use the resources from the care point of long-term care families as well.
And, to sum all of this up: the country's long-term care policies are a bust, because, when the crises come, there's NOT enough manpower, to offer the cares needed to these demented elderly populations in the local communities, and it all started at the very start, because the systems hadn't gotten set up properly, and they're still, testing the waters on this, that's why, as MERS-CoV hits, all the problems, came out!
