Edmonton Journal from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada • 3

IF A3 EDMONTON JOURNAL THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 2005 run .1 Mr-7 REPORT "Annual $250M increase to overhaul system still has to get past caucus conservatives I us a A government report calls for an officials said the number being discussed around the cabinet table is $250 million a year. Alberta currently spends just over 1 billion on long-term care and assisted-living facilities. '1 don't know if it's going to be quite that much," said Evans, referring to the estimated 25-per-cent increase. She admitted about 150 million will be needed to increase staffing to levels sufficient to provide 3.4 hours a day of care to every resident of long-term care facilities. The new standard, called for by Evans earlier this year, replaces the 1.9 hours per day that had been in place for two decades.

On top of that, if the government goes ahead with all of the recommendations, "if you start pricing out all of those themes, it could be as high as ($250 million) "she said. The plan is expected to come under fire next week at the government's caucus retreat in Bonnyville, when conservative MLAs are expected to attack it as an indication the government has abandoned fiscal responsibility and is rapidly spending its way back into trouble. Evans said she is ready for a fight if needed, but she thinks even the staunchest conservatives will understand that caring for the province's elderly and infirm is not something that JAMES BAXTER Legislature Bureau Chief EDMONTON TheAlbertagovernmentisplanningto spend at least $250 million a year to improve conditions at the province's continuing care and seniors residences, Health Minister Iris Evans said she does not yet know the exact price tag of the 45 recommendations contained in the special MLA committee report made public "Wednesday. But she said it will require a Jot of money to ensure Alberta's seniors are properly cared for in all provincially funded facilities. The committee was launched this summer in response to a scathing rebuke by Auditor General Fred Dunn, who catalogued a myriad of problems, mostly related to lackoffundingforproper staff.

Dunn documented cases of patients who were routinely sedated to reduce the burden on staff, others who were awakened and dressed at 3 a.m. to lessen the morning rush and tragic cases of seniors left to sit for hours in their own feces because mere was insufficient staff available to take them to the bathroom and to help clean them. After a summer of closed-door meetings and consultations, MLAs Len Webber and Raymond Prins issued their report calling for increased staffing at all types of care facilities, improving training and staff retention programs, creating and managing a new licensing system, introducing a central complaint and dispute resolution office and improv-. ingthetasteandnutritionalvalueoffood served in provincially funded facilities. Prins said the continuing care system is in dire straits.

"The whole system needs help," he said. "The whole system needs extra funding, extra people. We have to do something with the standards to bring them up to today's needs. Needs are changing, and it's time to get with it." Webber said he was upset by some of the stories he heard while conducting the hearings. "I was quite surprised to see that couples were separated in their later years," he said.

"That bothered me. I thought that was not the right thing to do." Prins and Webber said they did not know how much their recommendations would cost But senior government 'Gram' RANDY BO SWELL CanWest News Service She was a transplanted American who spent 80 of her 104 years in Canada a teacher and homesteader in Alberta during the opening of the West, a beloved mother, grandmother and charity activist in B.C. before her death in 1983. But Mary Gibbs Logan's family didn't know the whole story of her long life. Neither, until now, had history acknowledged the death-defying heroism ofayoungconsemtionistfromfron-tier-era Minnesota, who once stared down the barrel of a rifle and "freed the Mississippi" from logging-dam destruction It's a dramatic episode that U.S.

parks officials describe as having been "lest to history," but which is now set to be celebrated as "one of the most courageous showdowns" in the annals of wilderness preservation. MLAs Len Webber and Raymond Prins made 45 recommendations aimed at improving conditions for seniors in provincially funded facilities. Highlights: I Staffing: Immediately direct funding to long-term care to ensure that residents receive quality health and personal care services (and) restore personal care services, nursing, rehabilitation and recreation therapy. Increase access to personal care aides for people living in rural communities. Develop new strategies for the recruitment and retention of personal care aides.

Increase funding to teaching hospitals to encourage and support specialized geriatric training for physicians, nurses and other health and housing staff. I Patient care: Alberta Health and Wellness, in collaboration with regional health authorities, long-term care operators and other stakeholders, should develop a process that ensures supportive-living and long-term care residents are receiving appropriate medication and that drugs are used for appropriate purposes. Food: All long-term caresupportive-living facilities that offer full-meal services should review their food preparation and serving practices to ensure that residents receive high-quality meal services and receive appropriate support in eating and hydration. I Access: The province should ensure that there is an adequate supply of all forms of long-term care and assisted living spaces available in all health regions. Encourage the development of specialized services, programming and housing for special needs groups, especially young adults with disabilities.

I Family and resident satisfaction: Provide increased opportunities for family caregivers to participate in the meaningful care of their family members who are supporting-living or long-term care residents. Ensure adequate funding is in place to support flexible and appropriate respite programming to assist family caregivers who are looking after a family member in their own home. I The complete report is available at: http:www.continuingcare.gov.ab.ca report.htm pristine, forested shore of the Mississippi's headwaters threatened with ruin. Gibbs, accompanied by lawmen, ordered the dam's sluice gates opened. The logging company's superintendent, MA Woods, refused and said he would shoot anyone who touched the dam's levers.

The police escort withered, but not Gibbs. "I will put my hand there and you will not shoot it off," she said, releasing the water. No shots were fired. Gibbs's defiance, reported at the time in local newspapers, promptly led to the governor replacing her with a more logger-friendly commissioner. But the park was left largely intact, and the principle of preserving special wilderness areas upheld.

A few months later, Gibbs moved to Canada and married William Logan, who eventually began a homebuilding business in Vancouver. Herheroicstand at Lake Itasca was essentially forgotten until the early 1990s. re a Sirors week. increase in daily personal care provided to Graham Thomson A14 should be done on the cheap. "I think the report cries out that people who need our support need it to be better," said Evans.

"If we're going to be into delivery through regional authorities or private providers, we had better have standards and people had better measure up to those standards." But seniors advocates said the report, as written, offers few guarantees of new money or that any new funds will find theirway to the front-line delivery ofbet-tercare. Noel Somerville said the Webber-Prins report does nothing to address the key concerns raised by the auditor-general's report. "Now (Dunn) didn't just say the standards are out of date, he said the standards weren't being complied with," he said. "And this document says nothing about compliance. Updating the standards doesn't address the problem of compliance.

I don't believe that a top-down set of standards is ever going to solve the problems." Lynda Jonson, who collected 4,800 names on a petition calling for better conditions in Alberta's long-term care facilities, said the report was a waste of time stand to preserve source SUPPLIED Mary Gibbs in her activist days mother was "a real character" for whom "right and wrong were always very clear." Explorers had long sought to discover CANWEST NEWS SERVICE. FILE seniors in provincial facilities. and offers little new insight "No more surveys, no more studies let's get at it," said Jonson, who said the province's response to saving the ducks at Wabamun Lake after the CN derailment and oil spill last month outpaces anything it has done since Dunn's report to help seniors. "These people have been waiting months, even years for help. Today, they need help.

There's a crisis. Why isn't something being done? These are human lives." Liberal MLA Bridget Pastoor, who served on the committee during the hearings phase, believes the recommendations will make a difference if enacted and coupled with sufficient funding. Pastoor, who is considering writing an "adjunct" report, said most of what ails the system lies in inadequate staffing. "Certainly, the top recommendation we heard every single place that we went was more staff on the front line, trained, and we need the dollars to support that," said Pastoor, who herself spent 16 years as a care provider. NDP Leader Brian Mason mocked the Liberals for going along with the committee, which he said was just meant to distract the public.

He said the report fails in many ways to address the problems gripping the long-term care system. jbaxter8 thejournal.canwest.com of Mississippi Riv er the source of the Mississippi, leaving unresolved foryears the precise boundaries of the fledgling United States and its northern neighbour, Canada. The headwaters were finally identified as Lake Itasca and, in the late 1800s, the wild region that gives rise to the mighty Mississippi was declared a protected area. One of the park's early commissioners was J.P. Gibbs, and his daughter Mary served as his secretary.

When J.P. Gibbs died in February 1903, Gibbs was asked by Minnesota's governor to assume her father's position a startling move for the time, which made her the first female park manager in North America. But her tenure began in the midst of a tense struggle between preservationists and logging companies eager to harvest timber riches. The conflict came to head in April 1903, with Lake Itasca's waters rising rapidly behind a logging dam and the was a fearless environmentalist in her youth Honoured for taking The woman born Mary Hannah Gibbs in 1879 is to be honoured this weekend with the dedication of the $3-million Mary Gibbs Mississippi Headwaters Center, a new museum and tourism headquarters on the shores of Lake Itasca, the Minnesota source of America's longest river. And Gibbs's descendants from across Canada are travelling there to join in the rediscovery of an unheralded environmental pioneerwho passed much of her life as their garden-loving, babysitting, unassuming "Gram." Granddaughter Lorraine Logan ofVan-couver calls the surprise tribute "a wonderful honour." The Mary Gibbs she remembers was "Marie" Logan, a "powerful matriarch" with a fondness for recycling and tending her plants.

The full story of her turn-of-the-cen-tury heroics never came out in family gatherings, but Lorraine says her grand- Hk we Mental workouts keep brain young Cognitive exercises worth 7-14 years, scientists say 1 Daily Telegraph DUBLIN mow every MjClfe iilfi- 1 3W Uu i ii r. 0 WW DAVIT. LF LIGHTING 1 1 it A I'll 4 1 If "What neurostientists have discovered is the human brain is plastic, or shaped by what you learn, at all ages. We all know 80-year-olds who are pretty sharp and people in their fifties or sixties who have lost a lot of cognitive function. "There is strong evidence that when you get over 50 the degree to which you maintain your function is down to just a handful of factors.

Diet, exercise, mental stimulation, mental training and stress are all key factors in determining whether your brain can stay healthy enough for you to enjoy life in the new prime between 50 and 80. Researchers followed the experiences of almost 3,000 men and women aged between 65 and 94 who volunteered for a mental sharpness training program. One group was given memory training, a second trained in problem-solving and reasoning, a third group was shown how to speed up problem-solving and reaction times through computer game-like exercises that became steadily more difficult and a control group received no training. Those who took the training showed improved cognitive ability when compared with those who didnot. 1 I Elderly people can gain up to an extra 14 years of "cognitive youth" by doing mental exercises, scientists said Wednesday.

Volunteers aged 65 and over who did just 10 hours of training sessions to improve their mem-' ory, problem-solving and reaction times had men-; tal abilities equivalent to people between seven iand 14 years younger than those who did not. psychologyatTrin-l ity College in Dublin, last month published Stay Sharp, a book outlining how mental aging can be reduced by cognitive exercises and lifestyle changes. Wednesday, speaking at the British Association Festival of Science, Robertson said that increasing life expectancy and better knowledge of ways of slowing the effects of aging on the brain were leading to a growing gulf between biological and chronological age. "Our bodies are getting healthier and we are living longer. The main threat to being able to function effectively in old age is the functioning of our brains.

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