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Thursday, 18 July 2024
For Immediate Release—Hamilton, Treaty Three Territory: Despite a growing preference for community-based alternatives to nursing homes, Ontario’s home care options remain difficult to access and even violent. Those who run the home care sector and all levels of government, together, do not provide enough support for people who need assistance living at home nor for the many immigrant workers who provide home care services. Rather than working together for change, home care workers and receivers are often exploited and pitted against each other.
The Towards Just Care research project, partnered with the Disability Justice Network of Ontario, calls for a sector-wide transformation toward more socially just home care guided by home care receivers, workers, and grassroots advocates.
Their recent digital toolkit—Just Care Dreams—includes resources ranging from system navigation tools, advocacy tips, and maps outlining Ontario’s home care oligopolies and their networks. It draws on resource mapping, insights, workshops, and stories from a network of diverse home care stakeholders including low-income home care receivers, home care workers, and grassroots organizations representing seniors, disabled people, and migrant workers.
“When we talked to the communities around us, we knew it was time to come together, bring forward our common goals, and dream for better home care systems across these territories. We found examples and started to develop models of socially just care through this project. While this is only the first step, we want to share those insights and resources, so we can build more together”, explains Megan Linton, PhD Candidate, Policy Lead at Disability Justice Network of Ontario, and Community Lead on the Towards Just Care project.
This digital toolkit moves people from learning how to navigate and understand the complexities of Ontario’s current home care system to envisioning and building just care systems. We hope to build new pathways of home care that are publicly owned and directed, intergenerational, sustainable, and holistic.
“We’re hoping these resources will help people in Ontario not just make informed choices about how to access and participate in Ontario’s home care systems, but also advocate for more socially just systems in the future” says Dr. Mary Jean Hande, Project Lead and professor at Trent University.
Just Care Dreams: A Toolkit for Building More Just Care Systems is available for download on the DJNO website at this link: https://www.djno.ca/justcare
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About the Authors:
Mary Jean Hande is an Assistant Professor in Sociology at Trent University and Project Lead for the SSHRC-funded Towards Just Care project. Her broader community-engaged research program focuses on aging, disability, immigration, precarious work, continuing care systems, and struggles for social transformation.
Megan Linton is a PhD student in Sociology and Political Economy at Carleton University, and the policy lead at DJNO. Her broader work focuses on disability justice, carceral abolition, and the political economies of disability.
Disability Justice Network of Ontario is a provincial organization centered in Hamilton that aims to build a just and accessible Ontario, hold the powerful to account, and create a world where Disabled People are free to be.
Media Contacts:
Mary Jean Hande (Research Project Lead)
Assistant Professor, Trent University
647-458-5326
Megan Linton (Project Community Partner Lead)
Policy Lead, Disability Justice Network of Ontario
289-780-3566
Brad Evoy (Project Partner)
Executive Director, Disability Justice Network of Ontario
289-780-3566