LTC Long-Term Care Planning Canada Inc.

Patty Randall is on a one-woman long-term care campaign in Canada. She is out to educate Canadian boomers and young-seniors on the urgent need to plan for their care-years...while there is still time.

Patty is an “edu-taining” national speaker and author on caregiving; the costs of care for families; government programs offered by provinces and territories; the current aging trends in our country affecting lifestyle-retirement plans; and the everyday changes we all have to face to accommodate living longer. Her message, “Plan Now…No Surprises…Please!”

Patty, an only child, chronicled her decade-long care-journey with both her parents, as she gave up her international and national work as a community development specialist, went through scores of caregivers, cried rivers of tears, navigated our health system, agonized over various physical and mental health conditions, faced unexpected crises, and constantly scrambled to pay monthly care-related costs. She tells all in her community seminars and offers recommendations in her guidebook, the first-of-its-kind in Canada, for Canadians, by a Canadian.

Patty’s speeches are delivered in a forceful manner; she brings passion and humor to this issue in order to make a tough topic motivational. Her lively seminars highlight potential dilemmas, dispel any myths and offer recommendations to help boomers and seniors plan for the mysteries and problems associated with their own and their loved ones’ inevitable care needs. She discusses challenges such as: how to hire live-in and part-time caregivers; what home care and support services our government programs provide; how one may approach hospitals, doctors, specialists in order to get answers and gain support; how to follow medications and understand potential side-effects; why respite is necessary; what happens during a couple’s ‘forced separation’, when one must move into a care home and one is able to stay at home; what aspects are subsidized; who really pays for our care needs; and what does long-term care actually cost a family in our country.

Patty’s in-depth guidebook, “Let’s Talk, The Care-Years…Taking Care Of Our Parents/Planning For Ourselves”, is a combination non-fiction and how-to manual that offers step-by-step suggestions on many care-topics as she tracked her family’s successes and failures and frustrations over the years. In addition, the guidebook (revised and up-dated in February 2006) includes: health facts of interest, contacts for free resource materials, useful federal and provincial and territorial websites. It invites everyone to investigate solutions available for their families.

She points out supportive research--that for the first time in history, Canadian adults have more parents than children; that a new trend in our country is parents and children as seniors in retirement at the very same time; that eldercare and the workplace is a silent, growing problem costing Canadian companies an estimated $16 billion annually; that LTC is an issue that will touch one in three Canadian families…. She emphasizes that care-years are rarely short-term events, that 28% of caregiving lasts 3-5 years, with 22% 6-10 years and a further 22% lasting greater than 10 years making caregiving a career we never planned for ourselves. She implores us to read between the lines and ask ourselves questions when she quotes research stating that in 2010, 60% of those over the age 50 will have a surviving parent (vs. only 16% in 1960); that Canadian seniors currently make up 12.7% of our population yet account for 44% of our health costs. She stresses that most care required is not of a formal nursing type care but the ordinary everyday activity type, that greater than 77% of caregiving is done by family members. Provincial governments, large companies, care-related industries and national media, she believes, ought to recognize a win-win situation and assume leadership roles in educating Canadians.

She offers a four- step LTC formula to Canadians:

• Make ‘care’ an acceptable four-letter word in your family
  (Translation: develop an awareness of what is involved organizationally, emotionally and financially, in long-term care as the lifestyle risks to our selves and our loved ones are great)
   
• Make ‘care’ a component in both your current lifestyle and your future retirement plans
  (Translation: understand that ‘care’ can happen at any age, that most care takes place in our own homes, that each of us is responsible for paying for our own care and our loved one’s care needs and that the costs of that care to a family can be shocking even with our provincial governments offering some services and subsidizations)
   
• Make ‘care’ a workable process in your busy life
  (Translation: realize that everyday life doesn’t stop when a care-journey begins, regular and new demands roll right along at the same time we are attempting to balance roller coaster caregiving experiences--Patty encountered divorce, career changes and remarriage during this same period)
   
• Make a ‘care-plan’ for yourself--now
  (Translation: recognize the importance of planning when it comes to this issue, that we have to plan well-in-advance for our own care stage of life to ensure our independence, quality of care, safety—remember: caregiver today, care-receiver tomorrow).

In a nutshell, she says, “Long-term care can be rewarding for both caregivers and care-receivers but it is time for millions of Canadian boomers and seniors who are often in denial about growing older to become aware of the challenges associated and plan for this stage of life, before care-crises create a tsunami in their lives.”

KEEP UP-TO-DATE ON THE ISSUE OF SENIOR CARE A 2008 study from Statistics Canada---“Elder Care—What We Need To Know” ... to read the findings and see the informative graphs of this study click here

To contact Patty directly, email her at pattyr@telus.net

(all website links revised, January 2009)

First of its kind in Canada, Written by a Canadian, For Canadians Based on one family's personal journey

“... I am already convinced that your book should be mandatory reading for every adult in Canada and CERTAINLY everyone in any position in our Health System and our Federal and Provincial Governments” - Tim Landry, MSA Financial I know this care issue isn’t sexy or trendy, it doesn’t deal with the environment, sports, fashion or the economy; it isn’t about marriage, child-rearing, politics, exotic travel or fulfilling one’s dreams, and, it sure doesn’t generate that, “Boy I can’t wait to read this topic feeling" - but I guarantee, that when the time comes, this very issue will have such an astonishing and profound impact on your life that you will ask yourself (as I did) what planet you’ve been living on – why you haven’t addressed this period of your life before now.   - Excerpt from the introduction to Patty Randall’s extensive guidebook, “Let’s Talk The Care-Years…Taking Care Of Our Parents/Planning For Ourselves For more information, click here to go the guidebook contents page.

Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending