Ehpad crises: "How to recreate human and dignified communities?"

Vincent You is Deputy Mayor of Angoulême, director of hospitals and retirement homes.

And here is the “Ehpads” crisis again.

From book to book, from threats of investigation to official reports, we continue to show rationing, we denounce indecency, we demand new staff ratios and, new fact, video surveillance in the rooms to avoid new scandals !

At the heart of a presidential campaign, we will not come out with a new report.

Everything is said and written.

Staffing and control issues are now unavoidable.

The answers on these points could not miss as cannot be enough.

There are four major taboo questions that should give rise to a real debate in society.

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Until then, the fight against dependency consisted of maintaining autonomy.

Is it so sure?

What if it was the other way around?

And if fighting against addiction was precisely to recognize and show that the human being is a dependent being?

That he lives dependent on others and that his tragedy is precisely to no longer know how to leave room for this necessary connection which gives life.

The independent teenager creates his rules and pushes the limits, his grandparents know their limits and recognize themselves as dependent on the bonds that make them live.

What they seek is not unfettered enjoyment.

Our elders suffer from unlimited isolation.

A setting aside behind everyone at home.

A solitary violence that weakens little by little.

The first political response must aim to put our elders back in the human community and not on the margins of a society that only looks at performance.

Vincent You

You have to make the right diagnosis.

The exclusion is not in itself a lack of autonomy, it is above all a lack of community.

It is being isolated that causes the first weaknesses.

It is being cut off from others that causes the lack of activity.

The first question is to see that our individualistic society is a society of mobile healthy people.

The first political response must therefore aim to put our elders back in the human community and not on the margins of a society that only looks at performance.

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We will fight against dependence by recreating the community, by accepting to leave the dogma of homo economicus who makes his rational choices for his own individual happiness.

Old age does not call us to fight for their independence but to recognize that we are dependent on each other.

To find this sociability which makes fragile beings live, this wisdom which recognizes that each one gives as much as he receives.

The real prevention of addiction is to recreate this community bond that puts everyone in a position to be able to give and receive.

The question for politicians is therefore not to take care to prolong juxtaposed but autonomous solitudes.

It is a question of knowing if one wishes to continue to be (or to become again) a national and/or local community.

This question must therefore be answered politically:

Today, returning to an Ehpad means leaving the city.

You lose your neighbors to find yourself in a new place with unknown faces.

It is therefore necessary both to "put the retirement home back in the middle of the village" and to bring the inhabitants of the village to the said retirement home because it is there that we will find a beautiful exhibition, a daily meal open to all, numerous activities and the crossroads of all generations.

The choices of places must allow this choice of life.

So why keep a particular generation apart?

It is urgent to decompartmentalize public policies to rebuild a social friendship that does not forget its elders.

Vincent You

Everything leads to believe that the multiplication of proposals is necessary: ​​day care, shared accommodation for seniors or multigenerational people, mobile team that breaks the effects of rupture between home and establishment.

Ending the Ehpads scandal means first putting an end to the word to find the warmth of a house where everyone can find their place.

So why keep a particular generation apart?

It is urgent to decompartmentalize public policies to rebuild a social friendship that does not forget its elders.

When the time comes to make one's home a retirement home, it is necessary to maintain in this new place of life the exchanges which make each one a unique and irreplaceable citizen.

Common life is not the juxtaposition of individuals who consume food and shelter.

Nor customers who pay for services.

Giving citizenship back to each inhabitant of the house means first of all ceasing to see him through his dependence.

Changing perspective to escape the logic of GIRs, the “Iso-Resource Groups” that nurses are asked to measure in order to be able to optimize the establishment's revenue.

The more we lose capacity, the more we increase the revenue of the institution.

Not a fee-for-service but a recipe for each level drop: each decrease pays off.

Those who can walk can be the postman who will deliver the daily mail, those who like to read can share it with their neighbors, while others can cook, garden, play music, all those gestures that make living together more enjoyable.

Vincent You

To change perspective is therefore to see the man and the woman in their personal stories, to look for the abilities that are still present to support them and allow each person to be given a social role.

Those who can walk can be the postman who will deliver the daily mail, those who like to read can share it with their neighbors, while others can cook, garden, play music, all those gestures that make living together more enjoyable.

These social roles mean that everyone can give to others the fruit of their participation in the little society that is recreated in the house.

We too often forget that the body has a memory.

Despite the cognitive disorders, these gestures remain, as long as we know how to bring them back by ritualizing them and giving them the necessary time.

To do this,

the tools are in place, thanks to methods centered on the person (Montessori method adapted to the elderly, Carpe Diem, etc.) and non-drug interventions (INM) already recognized but often left as optional or considered marginal.

We must therefore start by deciding to change our outlook.

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Beyond the number and the just question of the workforce, it is the rediscovery of the meaning of work that is the essential step.

Working with our seniors should no longer be seen as taking a job in the chain of a nursing industry.

Accompanying life and its fragilities should no longer be “counting the toilets”.

The unit of measurement should no longer be the famous TMC (Head-Hands-Ass) which should be added in a limited time.

We must leave room for the person to give him his share.

To consider the role of the team as subsidiary, in the sense of Maria Montessori's instruction “Help me to do it alone”.

It is also a team challenge to set together a collective requirement that involves a management project, attention to dialogue between peers,

What to expect from our candidates?

Not just formulas and the promise of technocratic devices.

Beyond the rules and specific issues of the public and private sectors, we expect them to carry the ambition to recreate this common humanity due to our elders and to ourselves.

A dignified community that can never become an industry or a profit center.