‘What do we do?’: Surrey family scrambling due to long-term care shortage

Therese Poirier is retired, turning 80 this year, and has lived in Surrey about 25 years.

She is also the primary caregiver for her husband Leander Linder, whose health began quickly deteriorating in March. 

Linder is 76, legally blind and has diabetes and high blood pressure. After several hospital visits over the span of a few months, the family realized he would need more care than what could be provided at home. 

After finally getting a meeting with a caseworker, which Poirier said took longer “than was comfortable,” she explained that Linder had been assessed as a person in need of care, including the assistance of two people to be able to move him — the caseworker also said he would be returning home from the hospital the next day.  

“This was at 11 o’clock on a Monday morning, and I’m looking at [the caseworker], and I’m saying, ‘We’re not equipped. What do we do?’ She said, ‘Can you empty a room right now where we can get in [a] hospital bed, hoist, and wheelchair?’ I said, ‘If we need to, that’s what we do.’”

Poirier also lives with her eldest son, who was able to help in emptying the family’s living room for all of the equipment. 

As the family began looking into a care home, Poirier said there was a disconnect between the information provided at the hospital and reality. 

“​​[The hospital] gave me a list that was saying that care homes would be available probably within the six to nine months, but when I met with the workers from Fraser Health, they looked at me like, ‘Are you kidding? It’s more like one to two years.’”

In a statement from Fraser Health, it explained that a family can identify three preferred care homes in their area that would best meet their needs. The placement on the waitlist is based upon when those choices are made, but in some exceptional circumstances, priority may be adjusted to ensure people with the greatest needs receive timely care. A person could also accept an interim placement in a long-term care home that has space available, while waiting for a spot in their preferred home to open up. 

The cost of care homes can be up to 80 per cent of the person’s income — usually costing between $1,000-$4,000 a month. In comparison, private care homes cost anywhere between $6,000-12,000 a month. 

The B.C. Office of the Seniors Advocate has been raising the alarm on the state of long-term care for several years, and advocate Dan Levitt has similar concerns with long wait times and lack of beds for seniors. He said the province is simply not keeping up with demand year after year. 

According to the Levitt, there were 7,000 people waiting for a bed in 2025, which has already risen to 8,000 this year — this is over a 200 per cent increase compared to 2020. Over that same period, wait times have also grown from five months to about 10 months.

“Many are left navigating the process without clear information about timelines, about placement options, or the next steps,” he said. 

Levitt worries this can lead to seniors remaining in unsafe or unsustainable homes. Others may also be waiting in hospital beds intended for patients who require acute care and further overwhelming hospitals.

Linder has been back home for about seven weeks. The equipment he needs in order to move around the house is only free for the first three months, then it can be rented or bought.  

“The hoist and the wheelchair — which we need, otherwise he never can get out of bed — to rent that equipment is $900 a month, or to buy it it’s $12,000. ”Poirier is also still shopping around for a hospital bed.

Fraser Health wrote that a person’s care team can help refer them to a local supplier or access the Red Cross equipment loan program. There might also be some costs for medical supplies and equipment that can be covered based on the person’s situation. 

Linder has home support workers who come four times a day to help move him and wash him. According to Poirier, the service is free for the first two weeks, and after that, the charge is based on income, with the maximum being $80 a day. 

Each visit is 30 minutes, and while Poirier said the workers do a great job, she can tell they are always moving quickly to get to the next client.

If someone is living on $31,000 a year or higher, Levitt explained, one hour of care a day would be $10,000 for a year. “A third of your income is now going to one hour a day of care, and many seniors are forgoing that care,” he said. 

Fraser Health wrote that “home support and home health rates for clients are established based on Ministry of Health guidelines and a client’s income. If a client or their family are facing serious financial hardship, they may apply for a temporary reduction of their client rate.”

Poirier recalls speaking to a Fraser health worker who said Linder was lucky to have her — the worker explained that “some of the people we see live alone, we are the only people that they see all day,” Poirier said.

“I thought, oh my god, that cannot be. You cannot have somebody in a bed alone all day in the house by themselves with no care, but apparently it may be happening.” 

Poirier said that she is fortunate to have family in Surrey who are able to provide support. Caring for her husband has been challenging, as Poirier is unsure what to do other than call the family doctor when Linder has a persistent cough or high blood pressure, for example. With Linder’s condition, Poirier is getting used to different ways of doing things. 

“If he needs any kind of blood work that has to be arranged with LifeLabs, they come to [the house to do that] because we can’t get him out to the lab. You deal with these things as they come along, but I’ve never experienced this before, so I’m counting a lot on other people that have [experienced this].” 

She also pointed out it can be difficult for caretakers to take time off — if the family wanted to take a vacation, Fraser Health does offer overnight services, but this would need to be well-planned. 

“The shift of responsibility has gone to family caregivers. They’re carrying that heavy burden. They have to face significant challenges physically, emotionally and financially. They’ll say this is the hardest job they’ve ever had to do, and sometimes they don’t see a light at the end of the tunnel,” said Levitt. 

On what the government could do, Levitt said the province can start by building more long-term care communities — in February, the province put construction for seven new long-term care facilities indefinitely on hold and in April cancelled five of those contracts.

Levitt noted that many of the cancelled beds were replacement beds and not new ones — the province needs almost 17,000 new beds in the coming years. There are currently more than 9,100 publicly funded long-term care beds in the Fraser Health region. 

Fraser Health wrote “we are working to deliver the long-term care beds seniors need and improving services so they can age in place like Well Connected at Home. We know many seniors want to stay in their homes as long as possible but need supports to do that.”

It added that the region is working to expand long-term care through initiatives like the Guru Nanak Diversity Village, which will bring an additional 125 beds to Surrey when it opens in early 2027. 

There is also a shortage of other options along the continuum of care — like assisted living or support housing for seniors. 

“We also aren’t building enough community-based services like overnight respite care or day programs for seniors. Nor do we provide a financially feasible option for seniors to age in place,” said Levitt. 

Municipalities also play an important role and Levitt said each city should have their own senior strategy and plan. 

“That includes mapping out where the infrastructure is — where [are] the senior centres, how easy it is for seniors to even walk down the street or to get transportation, where’s the housing located, what kind of community services are available for seniors and how are seniors dealing with the affordability challenges?”

In the next decade, there is going to be an additional 400,000 seniors — meaning about one in four people in B.C. will be a senior.

“Now’s the time to get the plan out and to get the action going. So seniors, as they age, have the confidence that they can go to government-funded programs that are affordable in their communities, and also that caregivers have some hope that there’s some respite and support going forward,” said Levitt. 

“We have to build that infrastructure. There’s no way out of this. You have to build the infrastructure.”

Poirier says she does prefer having Linder home, however, the transition felt overwhelming. “I was blindsided by it all, and I thought maybe [if I] prepared 20 years ago for this, I might have been in a better position to say, ‘okay, we have a plan, we know what to do.’”

The family is still meeting with their caseworker to assess what their best option would be, especially as they are unsure of when a space in a care home would open up.  

“I can say that to younger people, now … just be prepared. Start thinking that, ‘okay, Mom and Dad are in their 70s, what’s going to happen? Are we ready to [pitch] in like this? Can somebody take over tomorrow morning because they’re being sent home?’”