| Low Paid Caregivers a Risk for Elderly
A Union that represents workers in aged care residential homes and the community is marking World Elder Abuse Awareness Day by calling on District Health Boards and employers to quickly sort out their new contracts and give caregivers a desperately needed wage increase. Service and Food Workers Union National Secretary John Ryall says that the standard of care for elderly people is being put at risk through low pay, limited training and high caregiver turnover. .
Comsn's parent firm to sell off nursing care businesses
Goodwill Group, Inc. formally decided to sell all of its nursing care businesses, including Comsn Inc., to other companies or groups in an extraordinary meeting of its board of directors Wednesday. Comsn President Koichi Higuchi visited the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry and explained the board's decision. Higuchi told Shinji Asonuma, chief of the ministry's Health and Welfare Bureau for the Elderly, that six affiliated companies of Goodwill Group providing in nursing care services would withdraw from the nursing care business, saying, "Goodwill Group takes responsibility for Comsn's irregularities, which have tarnished the trust of the nursing care insurance system." Higuchi promised that Comsn would continue operations, including visiting nursing care, until the end of March.
How we treat the elderly is a scandal
They were chatting over photographs of the new baby in the family, when a clip-board-wielding apparatchik entered the room. Without addressing my mother, or asking my sister if she could have a word in private, she started firing questions. "Do you want 'Do not resuscitate' on your mother's notes?" she asked. "And would you like her cremated?" Our mother listened in dismay. At 91, she is somewhat confused, but still compos enough to take on board the implications of "cremation" and for it to make her feel miserable and unwanted. The callousness of this "professional" approach was breath-taking, but sadly not untypical, of the way the elderly are treated in this country. We are distanced from the old: most old people live far from their children, who have moved in pursuit of careers.
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