Engaging with Fairmount Home

The number one priority for staff at Frontenac County’s long-term care home (LTCH), Fairmount Home, remains the health and wellbeing of residents.

Staff and administrators at LTCHs across the country have been advocating for more resources and regulation for LTCHs for more than 20 years. In 2017, with the support of Frontenac County Council and in partnership with Hastings County Council, Fairmount Home staff began work toward achieving the reasonable goal of providing and measuring four hours of care per resident per day. Fairmount staff and Frontenac County Council have made some very strong progress to that end and have advocated at every opportunity that others join in doing the same. In November of 2020, with almost 4,000 recorded COVID-19 deaths among LTCH residents in the province, the Ontario Government announced a similar commitment to all Ontario LTCH residents. The goal is scheduled for achievement before 2025.

Not all LTCHs are created equal. Some are licensed, funded, and run entirely by private enterprise; some are managed by non-profit organizations; and some — like Fairmount Home — are municipally operated. Only about 15 percent of LTCHs across the province are operated by municipalities while more than 70 percent of people waiting for LTCH spaces say they would prefer to find a room in a municipally operated home to any other type. Why? Municipal homes, like Fairmount, tend to enjoy the more transparent and regulated oversight implicit in taxpayer-funded organizations. Financial shortfalls in municipal LTCHs are more likely to be covered with funds from other lines of the municipal budget. Municipal homes also tend to have higher wages for staff, higher quality of care numbers for residents, and newer facilities and equipment.

Still — even with shortcomings of long-term care thrown into sharp and public relief by the effects of the pandemic — our growing and aging population and insufficient attention to LTCH issues at the provincial level over the last decades conspire to ensure that demand for long-term care will continue to rise. We need to be prepared for that.

That’s where you come in. You will find on this page resources and background information you can use to learn more about issues in long-term care across the country. You can review many reports on LTCH dated as recently as this summer and stretching back more than 20 years. You can read about some of the programs and guidance available to families who are considering long-term care. You can familiarize yourself with the advocacy work of groups including the Eastern Ontario Wardens’ Caucus, the Association of Municipalities Ontario, and the Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario. Finally, you can use the tools at the bottom of this page to discuss the issues with your neighbours, to ask questions about Fairmount Home and long-term care, and to share your ideas about how you think Fairmount ought to be funded and managed into the future.

All your input will be forwarded to Fairmount Home staff and Frontenac County Council for Frontenac County budget deliberations and other considerations.

Our most vulnerable neighbours — mothers, fathers, grandparents, extended family, and friends — turn to long-term care when it’s no longer possible for them to live in the safety or comfort of their own homes. They charge and trust us to make a real home for them at Fairmount even as their health and faculties decline. They need us to provide for and safeguard their dignity. Many choose Fairmount as their final home. We need your help and input to do right by them.