Veterans Affairs Committee on May 11th, 2009

[Carlos Lourenso]

That's correct. It does have those elements. It can help with meals. It tops up whatever services they may be receiving from their provincial providers.

[Rob Clarke, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

A good portion of the veterans right now who are participating in the program are receiving assistance in one form or another from home care, such as cleaning, food services, medical care if required. Is that correct?

[Carlos Lourenso]

Correct.

[Rob Clarke, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

How much time do I have?

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

You have another 58 seconds, and then your round is right after that.

[Rob Clarke, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

With the mandate of the VIP being on an on-decision basis, is it a living, breathing document that changes from case to case?

[Carlos Lourenso]

The VIP is rooted in legislation. It has a number of standardized components: benefits, services, limits, different authorities that are applied consistently across the various jurisdictions nationally.

[Rob Clarke, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

So the VIP mandate is set there to help people in need of it the most, right?

[Carlos Lourenso]

It is there to help those who have been deemed eligible by government through legislation.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

You still have over four minutes, sir.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Is that his second five?

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

No, he took two minutes from Madam O'Neill-Gordon, and his round is next. We're watching it closely.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

I thought you were giving him an extra five minutes.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Do you have another question?

[Rob Clarke, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

Regarding program expenditures, the slide stated that in 2007-08, $46,211 went towards grounds maintenance, $170,307 went towards housekeeping, and a mere $19,868 went for personal care. Can it then be assumed that many veterans are well enough to stay in their homes, but the manual duties of household upkeep keep them from their independence?

[Colleen Soltermann]

Housekeeping and grounds maintenance are very successful in keeping veterans at home, and it often takes the burden off the caregiver by providing those benefits so that they're able to actually provide the personal care themselves. In that way it's quite successful in providing the overall support that a veteran would need in order to stay in their home. It is quite successful. Housekeeping and grounds maintenance are two key elements in making sure the yard gets shovelled in the winter and the house is maintained, and laundry is done.

It supports significantly, yes.

[Adam Luckhurst]

I guess the other part is that it has flexibility, so it really links back to what individual needs a veteran may have. So based on what services they get elsewhere, based on what they're capable of doing themselves, what the spouse or caregiver is able to do, or what their children are able to do, the package of services is worked through from there.

[Rob Clarke, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

Thank you.

I'll share my time with Mr. Kerr.

[Greg Kerr, Conservative, West Nova, NS]

On slide 21 you're talking about quality review, quality assurance. I think it's an important area that we haven't talked about too much.

Say you're doing an aggressive review and analysis, and you do it both with staff and with professional nursing staff. You mentioned you also are in contact with the Legion, etc. Can you give us a sense of how that actually happens? I was curious, because you say “provincial compliance”. How would you get the provinces to comply, since they're so independent in health care and that kind of delivery? How does that process work?

[Carlos Lourenso]

Different provinces have different methods to monitor the adherence to provincial standards at various facilities. In Ontario, for example, through the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care, they send out teams of five or six people who go into a facility unannounced and assess all sorts of different elements of that facility, everything from personal care to hygiene, to infectious disease control, to finances, and they assess the facility against provincial standards. The results of that assessment in Ontario, for example, are posted publicly on their website. They list the facilities, the standards that they've met, and the standards they have not met.

What we do is have people who are dedicated in each of our regions. Part of their work involves going in and looking at the various compliance reports—and they vary across the country—with respect to facilities where veterans live. If they identify that X facility has in fact become non-compliant to three key standards, then we would be notified and would have some of our staff go out and undertake a review of sorts with that facility, to ascertain the impacts on veterans.

[Greg Kerr, Conservative, West Nova, NS]

And it works?

[Carlos Lourenso]

It works great. But even better, what works in terms of the first part of your question is the initiative around going out and assessing individual clients.

Many times when people move into nursing homes at the end of their lives, not a lot of people come to visit them. Sometimes they can go months and months and, perhaps, always without anybody coming to see them. When we have interested people like the volunteers from the Royal Canadian Legion, when we have our own staff go out and visit them, ask them questions, ask them how they feel about where they live, undertake an assessment, identify unmet needs, that's a big deal for those folks. It's not only that it's the right thing to do in terms of their health, it's simply the right thing to do in terms of them personally, because that may be the only contact they have.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Thank you, Mr. Lourenso.

Thank you, Mr. Kerr.

The next round is actually for the NDP. Mr. Stoffer's not here, so we'll go right to Mr. Andrews for five minutes.

[Scott Andrews, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

I'm trying to get my head around a couple of the issues here. I'm looking at your slide showing how much money you spend in the different areas. You have 103,000 clients on VIP, with 96,000 in the community and 7,000 in long-term care.

On this chart of how much money you're spending, is the nursing home the long-term care portion of that for those 7,000 clients?

[Carlos Lourenso]

Yes, it is. For that 7,000, it is.