My mother is schizophrenic– in that mental illness kind of way, not the inconsistent disorganized kind of way [it bugs me the way schizophrenic is used in language these days...it's so retarded and gay! I feel gypped when I try to complain and people jew me out of it by telling me I'm being anal. But I digress.]
A few years ago she was being evicted from a retirement home because she continually smoked in her room instead of in the smoking room across the hallway. Her CMHA case worker, Laine (an excellent case worker), spoke to Heather from the Homes for Special Care Program at CAMH. Heather painted this wonderful picture of Gordon’s Residential Home. It was run by staff trained to deal with mental health issues. They had protocols to deal with inappropriate smoking/behaviour. They had supervised outings. When I took mom there, I was shocked at how shabby it was, and how crazy the tenants seemed. But I had hope.
As it turns out, Homes for Special Care are each privately owned but funded from tax dollars. A licence to print money. They get something like $1100 per month per person for a shared bedroom and meals. Gordon’s provided what seemed like minimum, irritable, care. Outings were unsupervised and if tenants missed the bus that came to take them back to the home 2 hours later — they’d have to find their own way home. The home has a total inability to deal with inappropriate smoking/behaviour. They couldn’t handle my mother, so she was transferred to another home… Shyan Byrne.
Shyan Byrne is run by David O’Sullivan and his sister Jennifer. I spoke to David, and he sounded so much better than Mrs. Gordon. He said he was pretty sure they could control her smoking because the only lighter available was attached to a chain in the heated smokehouse out back.
The home made Gordon’s look like a 4 star hotel. The home was predominantly tenanted by men and smelled that way. The shared bathroom’s door didn’t close. Mom’s room smelled of urine. Mom joked that Shyan Byrne was scottish for “Shit House”. She wasn’t permitted to make herself coffee during the day — even if she bought her own instant coffee to mix with hot tap water. The men, she said, would sometimes prevent her from using the heated ”smoke shack”, so she’d have to smoke outside. The O’Sullivans ran the place with my-way-or-the-highway rules, dictating what kind of footwear to wear outside, not permitting personal food, withholding cigarettes if they were pissed off. I’m pretty sure they were in her face, threatening her, yelling at her, maybe grabbing at her. So she’d yell at them or slap. David told me “I work too hard to get yelled at like that”. I think mom said it best when she said “It’s a funny farm. What do they expect?!”.
They thought she wasn’t taking her meds, but they refused to Form her. They said family had to do it – except they were the only ones who could swear to her state of mind. Instead, they waited — for some reason thinking she’d ”come to her senses”. Well, crazy doesn’t work that way.
After a couple of months, she slapped another tenant so they packed up some of her belongings in a garbage bag and threw her out that afternoon by having her taken to a nearby motel. They didn’t call me — instead, they gave her a scrap of paper with my phone number on it and the phone number of the Homes for Special Care program office (which wouldn’t be open until Monday, and this was a Saturday). Both were long distance numbers, and she had no money. Someone called me from the group that runs the York Region help line (310 COPE) the next day, mother’s day, to tell me she was in a motel and had no money.
Sure, telling a tenant she has to leave immediately contravenes the law — but it’s ok because these are just a bunch of crazy people. Who cares, right? Bruce Leonard of the Homes For Special Care Program at CAMH doesn’t seem to care much. He seemed a little dismayed at the way Shyan Byrne handled the situation, but he basically said she brought it on herself. And he said the Homes for Special Care program would no longer house her. He suggested I call the Help line again to find her emergency shelter, and gave me a couple of other numbers.
So right now she’s staying at the Newmarket Inn, a place with surprisingly decent staff (hey Ron, you rock!). Randy at the Office of the Public Guardian and Trustee, who is a bit of a dick and doesn’t tend to answer my calls or emails, rose to the occasion to call me back, to instruct Newmarket Inn to send invoices to his office, and to even find mom a place to stay in Orillia (“it’s not the Ritz”, he said. But we’ve left the Ritz long long ago)
I called Sharon at Kayla’s Home in Orillia. She sounds great - vibrant, intelligent, easygoing, and knowledgeable. I almost cried while I was listening to her. I really really really hope its a better fit for mom. I feel like I have false hope, though. It’s only a matter of time before she starts smoking in her room at the new place. Thanks, Smoke Free Ontario Act, for making my mother difficult to house.
Monday had me holding this huge burden of finding mom a place to stay and potentially paying for her indefinite stay at the motel. Now it’s Wednesday and Mom’s safe with a place she can live run by people who sound ok. I’ll take her there on Friday.
I really hope it works out for a while. Because if it doesn’t… what will be next?
