No Going Home

Canadians are living the longest, healthiest lives that we have ever known. But the downside of aging finds every family eventually. Increasingly, we are dealing with heart-wrenching decisions around the care of our parents and relatives: When is it time for a nursing home? How will we know they are getting the care they need? What is the state of institutional care?


Ten years ago, Star journalist Moira Welsh first asked these questions and began to delve into the state of nursing home care in Ontario, embarking on a journalist’s odyssey that continues to this day. With the full co-operation of residents’ families, Welsh has confronted the issues raised by their stories – hair-raising tales of untreated medical problems and neglect, often in lockstep with insufficient oversight and budget belt-tightening. Meet Natalie Babineau, Sylvia Bailey and Danae Chambers. Their stories, as told by Welsh, galvanized government and the health-care system to take action. But has anything really changed?

StarDispatches is a weekly subscription series of quality journalism in electronic form from the newsroom of the Toronto Star, Canada's largest newspaper.