CollingwoodToday welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected]. Please include your daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following letter is in response to an article regarding Sunset Manor, published Jan. 25.
Fifty-two needed beds for the elderly left empty? This has been a long-running outrage during the pandemic, demonstrating incompetence at many levels: Sunset Manor management, the County of Simcoe and the Ontario government.
Our mother, who died in the Collingwood hospital on Dec. 27 at age 96, was on a wait list for long-term care for more than two years.
She — and dozens of other people — could have benefited from living at Sunset Manor, another government-run long-term care home (nursing home) or a privately run retirement home, instead of spending her final seven weeks in a hospital bed. The hospital nurses do their best, but they shouldn’t be placed in this position.
For our family, personally, this system has been a huge disappointment over the past few years. Will the rest of us encounter a similar logjam in health care as we near the end of our own lives?
We need to prod our elected representatives immediately to improve financial support for future senior care. The boomers are coming.
James Dalziel
Collingwood
