I'd like to thank you for the invitation to appear before this committee and for the opportunity to participate in this important dialogue.
I will speak to you today about Langley seniors' experiences in accessing long-term care and the plans for long-term care in our community. I'll also speak on some other programs and initiatives that we're working on that could be part of a national strategy.
I represent a non-profit organization that operates Langley Lodge, a licensed residential care home providing 24-hour nursing care for 139 seniors. We've been operators in Langley for 43 years. We provide government-subsidized long-term care services for 121 of our beds under an agreement with our local health authority, Fraser Health. We also have 18 private-pay spaces. These are currently full and have a wait-list.
I'll start with sharing some facts about long-term care in Langley and my community. There are six care homes in Langley, government-operated and privately operated, with a total of 665 beds. All are currently at full capacity. The Fraser Health Authority has projected that Langley will need to add 70 long-term care beds by 2021. The well-known published projections for the senior population indicate that this will barely meet the need in 2021. We're not able to keep up with the demand at present.
The average age of our residents is 85 years, not just in Langley Lodge, but overall in our health authority. Seventy per cent of our residents are 80 to 101 years old. In 2025, the leading edge of the baby boomer demographic will turn 80 years of age.
Wait-lists for long-term care are already very long, often multiple years. In our experience, seniors wait until they've exhausted all of the available home supports and their caregivers can no longer cope. When they apply for a government-subsidized bed, they're surprised to learn that they will wait on a wait-list. We have had a 100-year-old gentleman admitted to a private-pay bed by his 99-year-old spouse. He was not approved for a funded bed. Every day we meet families who are desperate, anxious, and failing to cope, and who are astonished that they will not have access to long-term care in the short term. If they can afford private-pay, they will take that option. Many cannot afford it, the average cost being $190 a day.
Health authorities in British Columbia are employing strategies to manage the capacity that they have today to ensure that those who need it most urgently will get services. The unintended consequence is that other eligible seniors fall through the cracks, are turned down, or wait far too long. For example, we have a resident whose family admitted her to a private-pay bed due to advanced dementia. That was in 2014. This resident is still waiting for a funded placement. There are many stories of families liquidating assets to pay for care for their loved one. These include families who do not have wealth or where a primary spouse is still living in that residence.
The impact and burden on caregivers must be considered. Their voice must be heard at the planning tables. They are often the last to know that they will be impacted by changes in health policy and service plans.
It's also a fact that home care services are not sufficient today to support those who are turned down for long-term care, and they need to be ramped up further and more rapidly. There is a need for more publicly funded assisted living, respite care, and adult day programs. These are essential components of a spectrum of services that will ensure seniors are supported to the extent that they require along the aging journey.
Langley Care Society's vision and strategic plan is to expand service offerings and create a broader spectrum of care, for example, respite care and adult day programs. We have started with the most basic of programs, a volunteer-driven seniors peer outreach program that we launched this summer with a grant from the new horizons program. Our program engages volunteers who are seniors to provide outreach to at-risk seniors who live in our vicinity. We have identified 800 seniors in our local area who live alone.
The individuals who are participating in our outreach program are the older seniors. They're living alone and do not have family nearby or friends who are still living. They no longer drive. They've been recently widowed. They are experiencing declining mobility. The response to our program has been strong.
We know we are achieving the goals, and that it will continue to grow. In the next year or two we hope to add more health and wellness services, such as health promotion and primary care.
Langley Care Society also established a private foundation, the Langley Care Foundation, that is actively fundraising to provide resources for quality of life programs for our elderly residents. The monies raised ensure that our residents have music, art, and horticultural therapies, as well as spiritual care.
What is missing? We need a vision for seniors care in Canada. We need to be planning for 2025 and beyond, when 25% of the population will be over 65 years of age. A national seniors strategy could lead the way by establishing a vision for seniors' quality of life, health care inclusion, and income security. The national strategy could assist small organizations and communities like ours in Langley to adopt a planning strategy with a clear vision, access to information, and resources about types of programs and services that communities can set up with their existing service providers.
Long-term care organizations want to do more, to stretch our boundaries. We have the infrastructure, the knowledge, and experience to hit the ground running. A national strategy would help to focus efforts.
There is much work to do to prepare for the needs of the next wave of seniors. I encourage our federal leaders to lead the way with a national strategy.
Thank you.