HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1988-07-06, Page 5One-Stop Access
one step doser
BY TOBY RAINEY conserve dwindling provincial health care
Huron County’s long-awaited One-Stop
Access program is one step closer to
becoming a reality.
The draft proposal for the program,
hammered out after months of work by a
committee responsible to the Huron County
Board of Health, was presented to the
provincial cabinet for approval on June 29,
after winning the approval of both the local
health board and several cabinet sub
committees.
To date, no further word has been received
by county officials, and Dr. Maarten
Bokhout, the county's medical officer of
health (MOH) and chief executive officer of
the health board says that nothing more can
be done until cabinet acts on the proposal.
“I think we have done a stellar job in
putting this together, and we are confident
that it will meet with (cabinet's) approval -
butwe’lljust have to wait and see,” he said.
If the majority of the draft document's
recommendations are approved, the first
steps of the plan’s staged implementation
could be taken as early as September Dr.
Bokhout explained. This is welcome news to
the county's frail elderly population, which
will be the chief benefactors of the new
program.
Under One-Stop Access, confusion and
red tape will be cut for clients requiring any
of the broad range of health and social
programs available within the county,
simply by making one toll-free telephone
call.
That one call will access a single
assessment of client’s needs, ending the
present lengthy and often-stressful duplica
tion of assessment and case-management
necessary for different services, which often
cause an eligible client to give up in
frustration before acquiring the services he
or she needs to remain relatively independ
ent.
Once the program is in place and running
smoothly, One-Stop Access is expected to
dollars, partly by increasing the trend away
from expensive institutional care for seniors
by making it possible for them to remain in
their own homes for a much longer period of
time. By placing just the one call, an eligible
client will have easy access to virtually any
service now available in the county such as
home therapy and home nursing, as well as
to a wide range of homemaking services,
including meals-on-wheels, housekeeping
and yard maintenance, and to social services
such as friendly visiting and transportation.
‘‘One-Stop Access won’t change the
quality of the care already available in Huron
County, but it will make it much easier for
clientstogetthecare they need,” says Betty
Cardno, executive director of the Huron
County Home Care Program now in place.
‘‘In effect, Home Care will become
One-Stop Access, with the new program
subsuming all other programs,” she said.
“If anything, it will simply enlarge (Home
Care’s) present mandate by making it
possible for us to assess clients and make
referrals for any services they need.”
The eligibility criteria for programs will
remain the same as it is now, Mrs. Cardno
says, while programs which presently
charge the client a user fee, such as
meals-on-wheels and some homemaking
services, will continue to charge.
Once approved, the administration costs
of One Stop Access would be fully funded by
the province for two full years, leading to the
common misconception among the public
that all services available under the program
will be free of charge to users.
That’s simply not true, Mrs. Cardno says,
but she adds that under the single-agency
assessment and case management system,
each client will be given complete informa
tion on the services available to him,
including what they need and exactly what it
will cost them.
In the past, she says, seniors have
sometimes been told that there is no funding
THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY. JULY 6. 1988. PAGE 5.
avialable for a certain service, without being
told that the service is there if they are willing
to pay for it. This has led to so much
confusion, and often to an exaggerated
concept of the costs involved, that many
seniors or their families have failed to follow
up on the advice they may have received.
Prior to 1986, Huron County Home Care
provided case assessments and related
services only for seniors referred by doctors
for acute or chronic homecare services. But
twoyears ago, when the new Integrated
Homemakers Program (IHP) went into
effect in the province, Homecare’s role was
expanded to include services for frail,
elderly persons based on social needs rather
than just on health programs.
‘ ‘IPH opened up our mandate to include a
much wider range of services for the elderly,
and One-Stop Access will expand it again,”
Mrs. Cardno says.
The only difference will be that the public
funding for those services, which now comes
directly to the provider agencies from either
the ministry of health or community and
social services, once the service has been
approved by IPH, under One-Stop Access
will come from the ministries as a lump sum
directly to the county. From there, the One
Stop Access Committee, which has yet to be
This has led to fears by some of the
county’s present service providers that the
new program has the potential for an
expensive and unweildy bureaucracy, with
the possibility that there may be little
funding left over for actual services. Many
have also expressed the fear that the need for
their own services may be cut back, with a
committee of council determining the
allocation of funding.
But although both Dr. Bokhout and Mrs.
Cardno say that the concerns of the
caregivers are legitimate, both feel very
strongly that the new system will eventually
provide for even greater harmony between
the assessment agency, the funding commit
tee, and the caregivers themselves. They
also see the role of service providers as
expanding, not contracting, simply because
a much wider range of services will be made
available to many more senior citizens as the
-esult of simplified access to services.
“Naturally, we all have some concerns
about such a revolutionary new concept in
homecare,” Dr. Bokhout concluded. “But
we all want this to work, and we’re all willing
to negotiate until we get the bugs ironed out.
I feel very confident that Huron County will
lead the province in the implementation of
providing excellent service to its senior
citizens.”
Letter to the editor
Free Trade won't force export of Canada's water, MP says
THE EDITOR,
There has been considerable
attention paid recently to the issue
of water exports under the Free
Trade Agreement (FTA). The FTA
is an economic agreement, not an
environmental accord, and does
not obligate, compel or force
Canada in any way to export water
or any other natural resource to the
United States.
The FTA explicitly recognizes
that the governments of either
country have the right to protect
their environment and conserve
their natural resources. Nothing in
the FTA affects or changes the
Federal Water Policy announced
i The International
Scene
Joe Clark said
what had to be said
BY RAYMOND CANON
Joe Clark set off something of a
hornet’s nest when, at a meeting
while back of the Canada-Israel
Committee, he was bold enough to
criticize some of the actions taken
by the Israeli government in their
current handling of Arab intransi
gence in the Gaza Strip and the
WestBank, those parts of Israel
that were taken from the Egyptians
and the Jordanians respectively as
a result of the war between Israel
and the Arab nations. Criticism
and praise have both come in
goodly numbers as a result of the
speech and it may be some time
before things quiet down. While
they are still bubbling, let me add
my own opinion for what it is worth.
Trying to take sides in the
constant conflict between Israel
and the Arab nations is a no-win
situation. There does not seem to
be any middle ground; the Israelis
want you to be totally pro-Israeli
by the Honourable Tom McMillan
on November 5, 1987, which
clearly and unequivocally states
that the Government of Canada
opposes and will prohibit the large
scale export of water and the
diversion of Canadian rivers to the
United States. Both the Water
Policy and the FTA were developed
in keeping with the provisions of
the General Agreement on Tariffs
and Trade (GATT), which enable a
country to restrict the export of a
natural resource for reasons of
conservation and environmental
protection. These are precisely the
grounds for the Government’s
position.
while the Arabs are in exactly the
same position. When I was in Iraq,
it was literally dangerous to say
anything complimentary about the
Israelis; the newspapers in fact did
not even refer to Israel by name.
They chose to call the country
“ThatZionist Entity” butthen the
official line at that time was that the
country did not even have the right
to exist. Its lands had all been
stolen from the Palestinian Arabs
and that was that.
Most Arabs have moved away
from that extreme stance and have
come to accept, albeit grudgingly,
that Israel as a nation is here to
stay. The Palestinian Liberation
Organization under Yasser Arafat,
has been exceedingly slow in
coming around to this point of view
and that has been one of the chief
stumbling blocks in any settlement
in that area.
There is no doubt that the Arab
nations have been using the same
Some critics complain that water
is not explicitly excluded from the
FTA, noting Article 409 (which
does not allow either party to
completely turn off resources
being exported) and that, there
fore, the United States has full
access to Canadian waters. How
ever, Article 409 is not relevant to
fresh water, as there is no
significant export of this resource.
Although water is in the GATT
and has been considered a com
mercial product for 40 years, very
little water enters into the interna
tional trade other than bottled
water. What the FTA does provide
for, then, is the elimination of
Palenstinians as a club with which
to beat the Israelis. Had they
wanted, the same nations could
have easily absorbed all the
Palestinians and then some except
for the fact that in some Arab
quarters there is almost as much
hostility against the Palestinians
as there has been against the
Israelis. If the Arabs could ever get
united on their opposition to the
Israelis, there is little doubt that
the latter would have a rough time
indeed.
The Israelis have always relied
on the western world for support
with the majority of this support
coming from the United States
where there is a large and
influentialpopulation. There is
also no doubt that the “Zionist
Entity’’ is closer to us when it
comes to the implementation of
democracy; Israel is without a
doubt the most democratic nation
in the entire area. You can certainly
tariffs on the export of bottled
water, which is what Item 22.01 of
the Harmonized Tariff Schedule
refers to. The arguments develop
ed recently in the Toronto Star and
the Globe and Mail suggesting that
fresh water is implicitly and
explicitly part of the FTA are
largely irrelevant. Nothing in the
Agreement forces Canada to ex
port a resource which it has good
reason not to export. The Federal
Water Policy is very clear on this
issue.
Canada has never been formally
approached by any jurisdiction in
the United States regarding the
say things in public in Israel that
would get you locked up in any
Arab nation. However, if there is
one weak area in the Israelis’ point
of view, it is the all too frequent
assumption that our support con
tains with it carte blanche to do
what they want in order to counter
any Arab moves. Furthermore this
support precludes any criticism of
the way in which the Israelis
conduct their management of the
Arab population both within the
occupied territories or in Israel
itself. Israelis themselves may
differ on their internal policies but
we apparently are not supposed to
engage in too much in the way of
criticism.
Thus it was that Mr. Clark got up
at the Canada-Israel Committee
and stated bluntly that some of the
acts which the Israelis had engag
ed in with regard to the Arabs were
nothing less than illegal under
international law. He was booed
purchase and large scale export of
water by diversion. Water-short
areas of the Southwestern U.S., for
example, are dealing with their
situation through improved con
servation measures. Finally, there
is a scheme which has been in the
proposal stage for 29 years, the
so-called Grand Canal Project,
which envisions the diversions of
waters from James Bay to the U.S.
via the Great Lakes. This project is
not being pursued and will not be
considered by the Federal Govern
ment.
Murray Cardiff
MP Huron Bruce
and some people even stood up and
walked out. Clark, to his credit,
stood his ground and, although the
government has tried to pour oil on
the troubled waters, what he said
hadtobe said andshould not be
changed.
Perhaps some of the more
thin-skinned supporters of Israel
have to be reminded that criticism
of Israel does not signify a change
in any fundamental support for the
cause of that nation. Most Cana
dians have and will continue to
support Israel’s right to exist as a
nation even while the same
Canadians may feel obliged to
criticize some excesses perpetrat
ed against the Arabs. Contrary to
what some Canadians have said in
their expressions of outrage
againstClark’sstatements, the
Israelis are not being portrayed as
the bad guys and the Palestinians
as the good guys.
A bit of objectivity would go a
long way in this matter.