That situation is unacceptable for the family of Louise Miller, 69, who was hospitalized at Grand River Hospital with an aneurysm and stroke two months ago and is still in the process of recovery.

Miller is a well-known figure in the local community. She was instrumental in starting the Ventures Colour Guard along with her late husband Peter Vanderkolff in 1972. She was a longtime volunteer with K-W Oktoberfest and the local Heart and Stroke Foundation who received numerous awards for her work in organizing the door-to-door canvassers for its annual campaigns. She has also been a volunteer chaplain at Grand River Hospital for the last 30 years.

The irony of advocating on his mom’s behalf after all they years she spent advocating on the behalf of other families isn’t lost on her son Steve Vanderkolff. And he doesn’t think her being bounced from room to room is helping at all in her recovery.

“We’re not happy to put it mildly,” said Vanderkolff. “It has caused concerns for us and for her, but it’s also highlighted the whole problem of long-term care in this province. This problem isn’t just happening to her. If the wait for her is six months to get in, it’s probably the wait for everybody.”

The family has done their own investigating into available long-term care spaces after the Community Care Access Centre told them of the three to fourth month waiting list to get the type of specialized care Miller needs.

Places like Sunnyside in Kitchener have up to a two-year waiting list, while a centre in the Westmount area of the city has wait times stretching to a year-and-a-half. It’s left Vanderkolff in disbelief and searching for answers.

“My expectation was certainly that when she was cleared from medical, that within two or three weeks she would be into a longterm care facility,” he said.

“My assumption was that there would be places for these people to go to, and there would be some choice of facilities in the K-W area.”

The Miller family wanted her to be in a long-term care facility that could help an alternate level of care patient like herself and make her feel at home to help in her recovery.

A hospital bed is not the ideal situation. Miller, who has a lot of friends in the community, cannot receive visitors who could bolster her spirits and refresh her memories, which she has been struggling with since being in the hospital.

“She knows a good portion of the city, and because of that she gets a lot of visitors,” said Vanderkolff. “We needed to find somewhere that is conducive to that.

“We know she can’t go home, but we would like to get her in a home-like atmosphere.”

Waterloo ConservativeMPP Elizabeth Witmer said a lot of local families are facing similar challenges, with the Waterloo Wellington Local Health Integration Network reporting that there are 1,594 people on a waiting list for longterm care beds, according to the latest numbers available, from November 2009.

Witmer said the provincial government’s Aging at Home Strategy has been a failure, and that waiting lists for long-term care beds have doubled in the last five years — from a waiting list of 12,000 in 2005 to more than 26,000 today.

“We’re facing a tsunami,” she said. “We have a growing aging population.

“We’ve been trying to jolt the government into action, and increasingly I’m hearing from families that they can’t get into these long-term care beds. ”

But the Liberal government has made a significant commitment to long-term care, said Ivan Langrish, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Health.

“We have increased funding for long-term care over 50 per cent since 2003, adding an additional $150 million in the last year alone,” Langrish said in an e-mail.

“This government has opened 8,000 new LTC beds and we are adding another 2,000 beds in 10 communities across the province by 2012.”

But that’s not helping Vanderkolff right now.

That’s why he shared the story of his mom’s plight of what’s happening in the senior care system.

“Every time we go to visit, it’s like “What room is she in today?” said Vanderkolff.

“I would call this cruel and unusual punishment.”