Latest news with #nursinghome
Wall Street Journal
5 days ago
- General
- Wall Street Journal
Am I Struggling Over My Mother's Alzheimer's More Than She Is?
Entering the nursing-home unit where my mother now lives is like entering a painting by Blake or Goya. Residents are hunched over their chairs, their ghostly heads down and mouths hanging open. Some wear mitten-like slippers, but my mother refuses them. Dignity is still important to her. My mother, Iris, is here because she is in the last stages of Alzheimer's. My sisters and I trade off seeing her as much as possible because we know that, even in her diminished state, she lives for our visits.
CTV News
27-05-2025
- Business
- CTV News
‘I just couldn't take it anymore': Why one long-term care worker left the industry
Warning: Story contains graphic details Wendy Harvie decided to quit after working for 14 years as a personal support worker at a private nursing home. The 60-year-old woman from Oshawa, Ont., who is now self-employed with private clients, told in a video interview Tuesday that she endured years of violence at work, including 'abuse' from residents. 'We were always having somebody up at night that was disruptive or aggressive or violent, like there was always somebody that was up that didn't go to bed, that would be up screaming for no reason,' Harvie said. She says she and her coworkers suffered injuries from residents using canes, walkers, cups and hot drinks as weapons, adding she was punched, kicked and pinched. She described how residents dug their nails, usually full of feces, into her skin. They also scratched her, pulled her hair and spit on her. During her time there, she says workers like her didn't feel safe or supported. Before she quit her job around 10 years ago, Harvie says she had taken about eight months of stress leave from work. Harvie is among the rising number of people who have left the long-term care industry in Canada. The Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) released a study last week that highlighted the challenge of meeting the demand for long-term care workers in the country. These workers include nurse practitioners, registered nurses, licensed practical nurses, registered psychiatric nurses, occupational therapists and physiotherapists. The study says most health-care job vacancies in 2023 were for staff who often work at long-term care facilities, including registered nurses, registered psychiatric nurses, licensed practical nurses and personal support workers. The CIHI says these vacancies have risen steadily since 2015 and 'remain elevated' for many jobs. Harvie says most of her past colleagues didn't have benefits since they weren't considered full-time employees. Workers were often called in for extra shifts and couldn't take time off Christmas in part because of staff shortages, she said. 'I didn't know that there was such a thing at the time, that it was anxiety,' she said of her experience. 'Over the years, I just couldn't take it anymore.'
Irish Times
27-05-2025
- Business
- Irish Times
Will equity release prevent you getting approved for Fair Deal?
If I choose to release equity in my home, what might happen to State contributions under Fair Deal if my nieces and nephews have to wheel me off to a high-security care home? I'm now 74 and might over-indulge if my bank account gets healthily inflated by one of these loans. I thought I heard something over the last few years about the HSE being unhelpful about care home contributions if the main asset has been diminished by a loan? Ms GB It's a good point. Equity release may be an attractive proposition for some people, as may Fair Deal, but there is a risk as they are both feeding from the same pond – in this case, the equity in your home. READ MORE Fair Deal, which regular readers will be familiar with, is a system that subsidises the cost of long-term nursing home for residents, according to their means. There are three elements – a portion of your income; a portion of your savings or assets; and, finally, a portion of the value of your home. This last one is the only thing we are concerned with here. If you are the sole occupier of the home, you are liable to pay 7.5 per cent of its value for the first three years of your residence in a nursing home, after which there is no further charge against your home. If you are a couple, the charge is halved to 3.75 per cent per year for the three years. If your spouse or partner needs to go into care, they pay the balance. Let's assume for the purposes of this piece that you live in Rathfarnham, in South Dublin County Council, where the median house price is €426,000. On that basis, your 7.5 per cent contribution would come to €31,950 a year – or close to €96,000 over the three years. As with any mortgage, the bank will fix a charge against your home to ensure it gets its money back. Most people availing of Fair Deal do not have that sort of cash available to them. So what they do is this: they apply for a Nursing Home Loan. This covers the contribution due on the family home with the money being paid from the sale of the property down the line, or after their death. Naturally, the HSE wants to be sure of getting its cash back if it is advancing you that sort of money. And the way it does this is by taking a charge on your home. When the house is sold, the transaction cannot be completed until anyone with a charge on the property has that charge satisfied, so Revenue – which will be collecting on the loan on behalf of the HSE – is confident that it can recover the money lent to the nursing home resident. The issue here, of course, is that any money you tap through equity release is also going to be subject to a charge against the property. How big that charge will be depends, of course, on what form of equity release you choose and the amount that you borrow. As we noted recently in an On The Money newsletter, there are now several different models for equity release. Several of these follow the traditional repayment model. The advantage here to the homeowner is that you are availing of a mortgage interest rate that will be lower than any rate you would get on borrowings by way of a personal loan. But, as with any mortgage, the bank will fix a charge against your home to ensure it gets its money back. If you borrow, say, €100,000 against that home which is valued at €426,000 in Dublin, there should be no issue, as there is plenty of equity for all comers. Repayment mortgages, of course, make sense only for people who can make the regular repayments – or have someone make those payments for them. When you're retired – and at 74, most of us would hope to be! – you're unlikely to have that repayment capacity. It can be very difficult to get Fair Deal if you have an equity release mortgage on your home, especially a lifeloan-type product That's where something like Spry Finance/Seniors Money's lifeloan comes in. Its big attraction is that you do not need to make any repayments during your lifetime. The downside of this is that the interest bill keeps mounting in the background, which means the amount due can be a multiple of what you originally took out in the loan, if you survive long enough. If you borrow €100,000 through a lifeloan, the amount repayable 10 years later will be close to double that, thanks to the joys of compound interest, and not far short of three times the amount borrowed in 15 years - which is why you need to think very carefully before going down this route. As a result, unsurprisingly, Spry Finance insists that there are no mortgages outstanding on any home it lends against. If there are, you will have to consolidate that amount in any loan you have taken, which could make for very expensive borrowings. Its promise to you is that the outstanding loan balance will never amount to more than the value of your home. But that is little consolation to the HSE and Revenue, which need to make sure that 22.5 per cent of the equity is available to them to repay any loan under Fair Deal. This is why it can be very difficult to get Fair Deal if you have an equity release mortgage on your home, especially a lifeloan-type product. If you are the sole occupier of the home, you are liable to pay 7.5 per cent of its value for the first three years of your residence in a nursing home However, Spry does now offer a feature where you can pay 6.8 per cent interest on your loan instead of the standard 6.7 per cent, and ringfence 20 per cent of the value of the property from exposure to the lifeloan. That gets you most of the way to the 22.5 per cent required under Fair Deal. However, you would still need to reassure the HSE and Revenue that you, or some guarantor, was good for the remaining 2.5 per cent of the property's value – €10,725 in our example – before they would consider extending Fair Deal to you. And, of course, in the absence of Fair Deal, you will be stuck with private nursing home charges of between €5,000 and €8,000 a month depending on location. So is it possible to get Fair Deal with equity release? Yes, but it is very difficult– and the HSE's initial position will almost inevitably be to refuse, unless you can show it where the money will come from to repay any Fair Deal loan. Please send your queries to Dominic Coyle, Q&A, The Irish Times, 24-28 Tara Street Dublin 2, or by email to with a contact phone number. This column is a reader service and is not intended to replace professional advice
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Yahoo
Woman accused of ramming Jeep into vehicle full of kids in Lawrence County
A woman is accused of repeatedly ramming her car into another car full of kids. Police said they were called to a crash on 725 Paul Street in New Castle. A Jeep and Mazda were crashed at the scene. According to a criminal complaint, the victims told police they were meeting up with Madison Margel, 22, for a fight. They reportedly fought in the parking lot of a nursing home. The victims said Margel rammed into the Mazda they were all in with her Jeep multiple times. Police said another woman, who was with Margel, threatened the kids with a baseball bat. She has not been charged. Download the FREE WPXI News app for breaking news alerts. Follow Channel 11 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch WPXI NOW
CTV News
22-05-2025
- General
- CTV News
Long-delayed nursing home project in Grenfell expected to resume in near future
WATCH: Nearly two years after a sod turning ceremony a new nursing home in Grenfell is expected to be built soon. Wayne Mantyka reports.
