A group of roughly a dozen of Sudbury's personal support workers representing three unions (UNIFOR, CUPE, SEIU) gathered on April 20 to voice their concerns to Nickel Belt MPP France Gélinas.
Representatives from seven different long-term care facilities were on hand for the meeting Friday morning where they discussed the stress that their system is under and the pressures that PSWs face on a day-to-day basis.
The meeting was organized by Melissa Wood, unit chair with St. Gabriel's Villa, one of Sudbury's seven long-term care facilities. Sudbury is home to close to 2,000 personal support workers, but that number is not nearly enough to meet the demand.
Across Ontario there are more than 30,000 people on wait lists for long-term care facilities, a number that has grown from 20,000 in 2014.
"We wanted to get everyone together to meet and discuss our issues in long-term care," said Wood. "We know there are issues and we know they're on an individual basis and what we're finding in talking to each other is that there's a crisis in long-term care in regards to workers, in that there's not enough workers in long-term care."
The three unions have been lobbying the Ontario government for years for better standards and a better funding model for the long-term care system and its workers.
"We seem to be at a stand still, no one seems to have a platform or issue on how to move forward with lack of workers," said Wood. "Wages can range anywhere from $15 to $26 an hour...even if we do increase the minimum care standards, we don't have the workers available to go into these long-term care settings or home care settings. It's not an enticing career for people to want to get into."
Gélinas says that there have been issues in the province's home care system for years and those issues are now popping up more and more frequently in the long-term care sector. The Nickel Belt MPP says that there needs to be a more concentrated effort to make PSW jobs more attractive if there's any hope of drawing more people into the field.
"They are at the range of 36 per cent (employee) vacancy at St. Joseph's Villa, and 30 per cent vacancy at St. Gabe's," said Gélinas. "Nobody can remember the last time they had a full staff."
St. Joseph's Villa and St. Gabriel's Villa entered into a pilot program with College Boreal where Development Support Worker, EMS, and Registered Practical Nurse graduates were offered a free one week training course to take the PSW test in an effort to fill vacancies at the two long-term care facilities.
"Those are not people who chose to be PSWs," said Gélinas. "College Boreal is graduating a lot of health care people, but knowing about health care and being a good PSW are two completely separate things."
Gélinas and the Ontario NDP have been pushing for a minimum standard that would guarantee four hours of hands-on care for anyone in a long-term care facility. The Ontario Liberals have been supportive of Bill 43, which will go to second reading on April 24.
It may appear that advocating for minimum standards when there aren't enough PSWs to carry out these standards is putting the cart before the horse, but Gélinas believes that having this bill on the table shows that there is some progress and the government is starting to take notice of an often overlooked sector of the health care system.
"There needs to be a bit of a culture shift," said Gélinas. "The goal is to change the perception of young people that these (PSW positions) are good jobs. People need to be able to enter this field thinking this is something that can be a career, that can pay their bills and feed their families."
Wood backed up the NDP health critics point, saying that there are challenges with both attraction and retention when it comes to personal support workers.
"The grand scheme of things is that the Liberal government wants people to be able to stay in homes and have the availability of long term care or home care but there's no workers at either," said Wood.
"I don't know what the solution is to making it more attractive. It could be money, but there has to be job satisfaction and right now that's not there."
