Travis Bird wants to bring his father closer to Waterdown as he enters a long-term care home.
But despite his 84-year-old father, Don Bird, being considered a crisis patient, long waiting lists across Hamilton and Halton region pose a barrier.
"They try not to (give you a time estimate), but I was told that after three months he would have to be reassessed," Bird said.
His father currently lives in Etobicoke at an assisted living facility, but with his dementia diagnosis, Bird said his family needs to bring his father closer to where the family lives in Waterdown. And somewhere his growing needs will be met.
"He tends to wander and so we needed to make sure that he wasn't going to leave the facilities," Bird said, adding that his father struggles with "sundowning."
Some patients with cognitive issues, like dementia and Alzheimer's, become more active at night and sleep more during the day. Bird said his father's current assisted living facility isn't set up to help with his father's sundowning, meaning the family has to consider hiring a personal support worker (PSW) while they wait for an opening in long-term care.
"They're saying either he needs sleep medication or he needs a PSW to stay with him overnight, and when I looked into that, there are facilities that will do that but at a cost of $25 per hour."
The Birds are just one family waiting for a single opening at a long-term care facility for a loved one.
More patients on waiting list than beds available
Alexander Place is the only long-term care home in Flamborough registered with the province and, like most others in Ontario, it has more people on its wait list than there are beds in the home.
According to Trevor Sykes of Jarlette Health Services, which operates Alexander Place, there are 128 beds available at the Waterdown long-term care home and there are 150 people on the wait list.
“As a result, our home operates at full occupancy,” Sykes wrote in an email.
Bird said he has sent out an application to about 20 different long-term care homes for his father.
Long-term care facilities in nearby Burlington and Hamilton, which Flamborough residents are able to apply to, also have long wait lists. CAMA Woodlands Nursing Home in Aldershot has a 348-person wait list for its 134 beds, while Hampton Terrace Care Centre nearby has 291 people waiting for a chance to use one of its 101 licensed beds.
Wait for spaces in Hamilton can be five years - or more
Hamilton has approximately 3,773 beds in its 25 long-term care homes, with between 1,500 and 2,000 wait-listed patients at any given time — and a patient can find themselves on a wait list for anywhere from two to five years, sometimes more.
In the past two years, Hamilton has lost two of its long-term care facilities, leaving 25 locations operating across the city. One of the homes that closed was Blackadar in Dundas.
Waterdown's Saijal Patel has been looking for space at a long-term care home for her father, Jayant Patel, for several months.
Her 89-year-old father was diagnosed with Alzheimer's in the spring and is unable to walk on his own.
"It's very stressful. We're looking here, in Burlington, Hamilton...They're trying to encourage us to make that list really long and even further out, but that doesn't make sense for us," she said, adding that the family wants to visit regularly and Patel's mother can't drive herself to visit her husband.
In the meantime, Patel says, caring for her father's advanced needs has fallen on herself, her family and personal support workers, whose schedules can be unreliable. She has missed work to help care for him, while also visiting long-term care homes to find the right fit for him.
"Even under crisis, which my dad's probably going to qualify for, they're saying six months with no support. My mom's 83. She can't take care of him," she said.
January 2024 began with more than 1,900 patients waiting for a bed in a long-term care facility in Hamilton. Out of that list, 368 patients were reported to be at a crisis level in need of a bed.
In November 2024, a city report read, approximately 161 patients from both St. Joseph's Hospital and Hamilton Health Sciences were using a hospital bed while waiting for space in a long-term care home.
The report states that Hamilton expects to add 870 beds over the next eight to 10 years, through expansions of three long-term care facilities across the city.
But the need for long-term care facilities is expected to rise in the next 15 years, with Statistics Canada predicting that the number of people over the age of 80 un the province will more than double by 2040.
