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School of Social Work

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Disability justice network of Ontario

ABOLISH LONG-TERM CARE

Disability Justice Network of Ontario calls to Abolish Long-Term Care: https://www.djno.ca/abolish-ltc Petition: https://www.djno.ca/petition Spectator article: https://www.thespec.com/opinion/contributors/2022/01/23/our-long-term-care-system-must-be-dismantled.html

Mar 01, 2022

 
Disability Justice Network of Ontario: We believe that institutionalization is a result of the same systems of incarceration that removes, isolates and confines community members in psychiatric institutions, emergency shelters, and prisons. We believe in an end to the warehousing, caging, and incarcerating of people instead of providing care and justice. All levels of government must work together to deinstitutionalize and to invest in alternative solutions to long-term care. Long-term care must be abolished.  Sign our petition and send a letter to your elected representative. 

 

 

From the Spectator article: 

We are witnesses to an extended crisis in long-term care. The context is not new. The privatization, corner-cutting, profit-driven changes to care have resulted in the outcomes of inadequate services, widespread neglect, poor quality care, and horrific working conditions for those working in these systems.

This contemporary scaffold, alongside slow responses and inaction by the provincial government have resulted in thousands of deaths during this pandemic. It has been and continues to be a catastrophe. In the spring of 2021, we learned about how late responses to COVID-19 outbreaks resulted in the need for military intervention. It was the military, alongside reports from family members, advocates, and community members who revealed publicly that many of those living in LTC (most of whom are seniors, but many of who are nonsenior people with disabilities), died not only of COVID-19, but of neglect. To put it plainly, they died of systemic discrimination. They die, due to our sustained institutionalized disrespect.