RESOLUTION

TITLE:Call for the Ontario Government to restore its 1998 funding commitment to home health care.

ORIGINAL SOURCE:Church in Society committee

CONFERENCE ACTION:

FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS:postage

SOURCE OF FUNDS:Conference budget

STAFFING IMPLICATIONS:letter-writing

VOLUNTEER IMPLICATIONS:urge all members of Conference and congregations to write the Ministers of Health and  Finance and the Premier of Ontario urging funding restoration to home health care and to meet with their Member of Provincial Parliament on the issue.

MOTION by Jean Lee/Alan Craig that this 78th annual meeting of Toronto Conference write the Ministers of Health and Finance and the Premier of Ontario urging:
•restoration of the 1998 funding commitment to home health care.

MOTION that this 78th annual meeting of Toronto Conference urge United Church members, congregations, and Presbyteries
•to write to the Ministers of Health and Finance and the Premier of Ontario and their Members of Provincial Parliament urging restoration of the 1998 funding commitment to home health care;
•to meet with their Members of Provincial Parliament to raise the issue of home health care funding and delivery and to urge restoration of the 1998 funding commitment.

RATIONALE AND FAITH BASE

•The Christian churches contributed to the development of Canada’s publicly funded and administered health care system.
•At the 35th General Council (1994) we affirmed the principles of Medicare, and affirmed the reforms to the Canadian Health Care System which reflect a shift from treatment based to a more balanced holistic one that emphasizes health promotion, disease prevention, and community-based care.
•In order to be accessible home health care needs to be provided in the community, by the community, and responsive to the community’s needs.
•The Toronto Conference with the Social Justice Network of Ontario Conferences endorsed the Communities for Home Health Care coalition statement, a coalition of ethnocultural organization focussing on the present crisis in the delivery of home health care services in Ontario, calling on the Ontario government to restore its 1998 funding commitment to home health care delivery.
•Health Canada describes home care as “an array of services enabling Canadians, incapacitated in whole or in part to live at home, often with the effect of preventing, delaying, or substituting for long-term care or acute care alternatives.”
•Home health care has been promoted in an effort to relieve overburdened hospitals, including services such as post-operative care to assisting chronically ill patients to live on their own.
•Hospitals are discharging patients more quickly now and there is a persistent shortage of beds available in long-term facilities.
•Underfunding of home health care services means that seniors are placed prematurely in nursing homes or acute-care hospitals because of preventable deterioration of their health.
•Families’ resources and capacities to care for recovering or chronically ill family members are strained due to underfunding of home health care services.
•Due to the funding formula, the level of home health care services varies dramatically across the province.
•In May 2001 the six-year funding formula phase committed to in 1998 was frozen creating a crisis in home health care delivery