Defend Public Healthcare

Comcare, one of Canada's largest for-profit  home care  providers, must pay more than $800,000 toward the lifetime care of a disabled Kitchener girl injured by its care. The child's parents sued Comcare after a former Comcare nurse was convicted of aggravated assault for  abusing  their baby girl, Leandra Knarr, over several months in the spring of 2002. The already handicapped baby was 20 months old when Comcare began to provide overnight care so the couple could sleep. A home videotape showed the nurse punching and slapping the baby in the head and chest, pulling her from her crib by her hair and pushing her hand down on her face as though suffocating her. She  violently  twisted her limbs, resulting in three fractured limbs. Along with Comcare, the parents also sued the  Community Care Access  Centre (CCAC) of Waterloo Region, which contracted with Comcare to provide nursing service.  (CCAC's are required by the provincial government to contract out home care s

Competitive bidding is coming back. Or so it seems.  As of yesterday, the Ontario Association of CCACs had on their web site a link to a letter reporting that competitive bidding for home care services will come to four communities between October and December of 2010. As of today, however, the link to the letter is no longer to be found.  But while the link has disappeared, the web page still works. The letter, dated August 13, indicates these plans only reflect "the current planning  among CCACs and is dependent on the issue of MOHLTC Directives for CCAC procurement."  The Conservative Harris government introduced this model to home care in 1996: it requires Community Care Access Centres to contract out all home care services.  As a result, for profit corporations have taken over many of the home care services provided by nurses and personal support workers in the province.  There has been major problems with the quality of of care as longstanding not for-profi