nursing homes mobilized in the face of increasingly difficult working conditions

This Thursday, November 14 in the morning, dozens of gatherings took place in front of the Savoie nursing homes. Staff are calling for more human and financial resources to “offer quality care” to residents.

A call for mobilization was launched and followed, this Thursday, November 14, by the staff of nursing homes and home services to denounce care “elders who continue to deteriorate” in different establishments in Savoie.

They are like a daily medicine. The nursing assistants at the Chambre nursing home in Savoie brighten up the residents' days. Roland, 90 years old, impatiently awaits their visit every day, which is “between their daily tasks” he said: “We have to wait. You know a whole day in a room, it's not easy to bear, it's long. So when we see them arrive it's nice.”

In this establishment, a caregiver is responsible for 12 residents. She takes care of care, washing and also spending time with each patient. A rhythm, which exhausts Alexandra and her colleagues: “When there are work stoppages, management cannot replace them. Already on weekends, we are short-staffed. And if we are short-staffed during the week (…), we get tired of giving more , to run, to try as much as possible to do our work with quality”says Alexandra Campel, caregiver and union representative.

In the Saint-Baldoph establishment, the rhythm is the same. In this nursing home of 55 employees, there is a shortage of nurses, a coordinating doctor and several nursing assistants. Recruitment is becoming more and more difficult. So, here, management supports the strike movement:

Today, we can no longer find qualified personnel; we have to bring them in from other regions.

Stéphanie Lefèvre, director and president FNADEPA Savoie.

These establishments must face another problem. Three-quarters of them are in deficit. 400,000 euros loss last year, for this establishment near Chambéry. Budgets are voted on every year, with a permanent imbalance.

“This is a real structural issue regarding the financing of nursing homes and if we do not have clear and sustainable financing, we will clearly raise the question of the viability of nursing homes in the coming years,” deplores Arthur Boix-Neveu, the mayor (Generations) of Barberaz and also president of the CCAS.

This Wednesday morning in front of the nursing homes of the Savoie department, the staff walked off the job for an hour to demand acceptable working conditions.

Laurence d'Introno, general secretary of the FO departmental group in Savoie, is at the origin of this call to demonstrate. Its main demand: an agent for a resident. “If we want a quality of care that meets needs and if we want to improve the working conditions of agents, we are obliged to arrive at this ratio, all staff combined. It is not just caregivers of course, but there is also the administrative, the technical and all those who work for the nursing homes,” concludes Laurence d’Introno.