Reflections from the fire in a nursing home that’s already lost its licensure to operate here, from the Front Page Sections, translated…
The papers reported on a nursing home that had its license to operate suspended, and because there were three elderly men who smacked on the windows of the building out of hunger, that, was when the Department of Sanitations and the police stepped in.
Over ten years ago, the uncertified nursing homes were everywhere, and, after the multiple visits from government agencies and counseling on how the nursing homes should be up to standards, these are rare cases today. And now, with the implementing of Long-Term Care 2.0, there were the cases of nursing homes that weren’t operating still taking in elderly, and this case in Yilan was merely, the tip of an iceberg., the Department of Sanitation Welfare ordered the local governments to do an inventory on the nursing homes that were put out of business or hadn’t gotten certified by the government, that were still providing services to elderly who needed it.
the robe would be an S.O.S. from an elderly trapped inside a nursing home building, photo from online…
Secondly, the Department of Sanitation Welfare demanded the nursing homes in all cities and counties to have a complete exit strategy, and after they’d closed down, there would be social workers, giving advice to the families of the elderly who were placed there, on how to find a new nursing home for them to live in, or to leave the cases, entirely, to government to handle, to prevent similar instances from happening again.
We need to make a living for ourselves, for the long-term care providers, this is so too. Awhile I asked a friend who works in the long-term care industry, how the diets of the residents of the nursing home were provided? He’d said, that the facility he worked in has a kitchen, and they’d hired the cooks, that there’s no problem in providing the food provisions, but there were those smaller scaled facilities that don’t have the settings. He’d once see people who worked in his field, heading to the cafeterias, to buy the food items to bring back to the nursing home, he’d asked the individual, don’t they have a kitchen? The man said, it’s hard to find a cook, and to find a space to set up the kitchen to cook, so he can only, buy the food items from outside.
I am more than certain, that this caretaker of this abandoned nursing home in Yilan was also working all the positions, in pushing forth the meals-on-wheels and the dining together meal plans, the system of alarm by the communities, plays a vital role, and these three weakened elderly could still smacked on the windows to get help, but, if it’s an elderly who’s bedridden, I can’t even begin to imagine the end results of that.
So, although there’s this good thought of the long-term care programs provided by the governments, but it’s still NOT exactly, well thought-out. There are the nursing homes without the properly equipped kitchens to prepare the meal plans for the residents like the writer’s friend worked in, and it’s still NOT an isolated case, and, the government must do what it can, set up a better plan, to provide the needed care for the elderly population in these nursing homes, because there would be more elderly people in the world, by 2020, I think, and they will become, the MAJORITY!
Life, the Obstacle Course 