Category: Featured

The future for Certified Caregivers/PSWs

Over three years, the total hourly wage for PSWs will increase by up to $4.00, raising the base wage of publicly funded PSWs to at least $16.50 per hour by April 1, 2016.

There are approximately 100,000 PSWs working across Ontario’s health care system. More than 34,000 have jobs in the home and community-care sector.

CCS has graduated over 30,000 Certified Caregivers/PSWs in Ontario and around the world. These PSWs have over 350 hours of anatomy and physiology and 800 academic hours on topics such as nutrition, family care, palliative care, dementia care and ongoing conditions, lifts and transfers and more.

“We know that Ontarians would prefer to receive care in their own homes and communities and personal support workers play a critical role in making this possible. Our government is committed to working closely with our partners to better support PSWs, including improvements to their wages in recognition of the important role they play in our health care system.”
– Dr. Eric Hoskins, Minister of Health and Long-Term Care

Dr. Eric Hoskins has left the house, but his commitment lives on to improve client and caregiver experience while creating better quality, trained PSWs, as does investment focused on increasing capacity and improving performance.

The commitment to self-directed care could seriously change the community delivery of care from the 80/20 rule I spoke of before with little funds trickling down to the two most important people in the care process: the client and the psw. Changing by removal of the multi-level agencies the 20% into administration and 80% of every health care dollar out to the client and Certified Caregiver/PSW. We will now see a difference in the cost per client and the delivery system will be working for Ontarians.

Online learning is the future of education

Over 25 years ago I wanted online courses, believed in the purity of education to advance knowledge, career and personal development. At last we have returned to this with the teaching and hybrid of online courses. For continuous, adult learners the web has provided an academic community 24/7 and teaches critical thinking and problem-solving skills in a virtual environment.

Digital learning is increasing while campus enrollments are decreasing. Individuals going online for education-related reasons are spending five hours or more online. Most are reporting using the internet from home and are more engaged users than in a classroom. Distance education is more prevalent in smaller and more remote communities and I believe is as strong as formal, traditional learning in a classroom.

I remember well the aggravation of undergraduate studies in a classroom where too many took up most the instructor time and more conversations were about anything other than the topic of study. Time wasters for those of us who worked, raised a family and wanted to participate in learning that was more like socializing. The one-on-one lessons that are often part of online education have taken teacher-student interaction to a new level, where the interaction and training is unique and valuable.

On-line for rural areas in many developing countries is used to reach citizens who do not have normal access to education. For urban areas where schools are unsafe again traditional education can be rejected in favour of home schooling. A friend of mine in taking her studies for most of her life as a home school decided to go to school for the social experience of high school. In less than one year she realized that although her marks were good, the teachers and students wonderful people she had little time left for herself after studies. She could cover the same material in less time and have one on one attention with an instructor when needed.

All education and especially in the classroom is in dire need of quality control. Examine the costs of education and value for your dollar. The work available must be part of this consideration. Accreditation needs to be considered as International Standards of Operation for the workplace. Education systems in all countries needs to give fair assessments of credentials and offer degrees and transfer of credits to those outside the jurisdiction of work. Community and workplace training are critical to a strong and vibrant workplace. The specialization both formal and informal workplace learning helps you develop knowledge and skills to contribute to a rapidly changing and challenging workplace.

ccsCARE has a variety of courses certificate and diploma, professional upgrading, career development and or exploring a topic of interest or starting a new career online hybrid platform that teaches the 3R’s reading, writing and rithmetic while developing self-respect, respect for others and responsibility and resourcefulness.

New plan for Ontario government – self-directed care

The latest plan of the Ontario government is to make PSWs employees of the state to deliver home care. We have become a nanny province with the Wynn government getting into the business of providing home care directly, quietly creating a new agency.

Five years ago, I did an extensive review of agency delivery of care, and how bad the actual care was compared to the Internet web site of the CCACs and LHINs propaganda of care for Ontario. This study showed the old 80/20 rule of productivity and costs, and the meagre help for seniors trying to manage their health at home. The least paid and least recipient of care was the little old lady needing care in her home, and the least paid was the PSW in a long line of bureaucrats that were at the trough getting their high wages and benefits, while the PSW and Care Recipient received the least.

This latest announcement, before Wynn pirogues the government, had Health Minister Hoskins escaping to another federal Liberal appointment of Pharma care, while dismantling one bureaucracy, CMHC, and creating a new one with PSWs instead of nurses.

If the doors on this delivery of all publicly funded home care are due to begin this spring, with full roll-out by March 2021, and if this happens, our concern will be for the families that are shouldering the burden of even more shrinking dollars for care, and that, of course, leads to the burden of caregiving for the disabled. Think about this if you cannot afford care and you are disabled. You will have to choose euthanasia. Thankfully, David Hoskins was protected from this scenario, as the United States, in their humanity, provided him with a lifetime of care providers.

About 729,000 people received provincially-funded home care services in 2015-16 delivered by PSWs and nurses. The rising costs, associated with all the agency employees who are not in direct service, leaves Ontario with a budget they cannot supply, and individuals in the agencies are paid enormous fees that Ontario, if they want to be able to offer care for seniors to remain in their homes, need to consider direct care by PSWs as they do in many countries in the world. The micro management of government in Ontario is increasing our costs and creating discrepancies in service.

Let us get these high priced bureaucrats out of business.