Other than convicted criminals, senior citizens are the only Canadians who are routinely kept in residential custody. The Victorian institutions that housed parentless children, impoverished people, mentally ill people and adults and children with disabilities locked their doors permanently in the twentieth century. Residential schools for Indigenous children were shuttered, once and for all, a couple of decades ago and good riddance to those awful places. Nursing homes have bucked the trend.
My current book project, Why Your Parents Get Lousy Care in their Nursing Home, explains why we should deinstitutionalize elder care as well. The book begins with an unflinching appraisal of long-term care in Canada and concludes with a manifesto for compassionate, cheaper, higher quality, community-based elder care.
If you are interested in this project as a reader, agent, or publisher, please contact me by email at lehnen.renee@gmail.com or by phone at 905-616-0454. Please visit my blog to find some of my previously published essays and articles.
