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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.