Langeland care cuts threaten older residents’ daily lives

Planned cuts to care services on Langeland are leaving older residents and their families worried about the future, DR reports. One of the island’s five nursing homes is due to close as the municipality seeks major savings.

Birger Printz currently lives about 100 metres from his wife, Anni, who has advanced Parkinson’s disease and lives at the local nursing home. He can bring her home for a few hours each day, but the closure could leave them as much as 38 kilometres apart.

“Our quality of life will be completely destroyed, because we won’t be able to have this everyday life at all,” he said. If he needs help himself, Printz said he would leave Lohals and move to be near his daughter on Zealand, or elsewhere.

The proposed cuts also include reducing cleaning for older residents to once a month, serving home-cooked meals every other day and relying more heavily on robot vacuum cleaners.

In Bagenkop, about 50 kilometres from Lohals, 92-year-old Conny Bechmann is already paying for private cleaning from her pension. She said she has always valued keeping her home clean and is unsure how she will manage with less help.

“It would be quite disastrous. It is also about quality of life, because this is my home,” she said.

Bechmann moved to Bagenkop from Hellerup about three years ago. With the cuts looming, she has begun to question whether moving was the right decision, but said she cannot afford to move again.

Charlotte Pedersen, also in Lohals, expects her 90-year-old mother to be moved many kilometres away when the nursing home closes. At present, Pedersen can reach her mother by bicycle in five minutes. She said the longer journey would make it harder to visit often.

Pedersen moved to Lohals partly to be near her mother and hopes to grow old in the small harbour town. She said she expects to manage because she is resourceful, but worries about older people who have fewer resources.

“If you’re not as resourceful, it’s really a problem,” she said.