Last April, Ontario banned personal support workers from working in multiple long-term-care homes to reduce the spread of COVID-19.
This past weekend, the government rescinded that prohibition for workers who have been fully vaccinated against the virus.
It’s being billed as a way of coping with a shortage of personal support workers who do the bulk of hands-on care in these homes. But it’s a terrible idea. It’s also one that brings into question the Ford government’s commitment to improving long-term care in Ontario.
There are compelling reasons — beyond just reducing the dangers of spreading COVID — to limit the practice of long-term-care homes relying on a revolving-door workforce of part-time staff with few benefits and temporary agency workers with too little training.
The oldest and most vulnerable Ontarians who live in these homes deserve the kind of care that comes from staff who are around long enough to get to know them and their needs. That happens when homes have a stable staff of mostly full-time workers. It doesn’t happen when homes reduce costs by relying on part-timers and temps.
It’s also bad policy for those who work in these homes, and that matters a great deal if the government is serious about dramatically increasing the workforce to meet its promised four hours of daily care by 2025.
Indeed, the very reason the government made this move, which it calls expanding “health human resources,” is because Ontario has a dire shortage of personal support workers.
But it will always be hard to attract workers, and harder still to keep them, until the government truly takes steps to improve working conditions.
Part of that is hiring more staff to do the work. There’s nothing more demoralizing for personal support workers that being run off their feet and still not being able to meet the needs of residents.
And part of it is making this work something people want to do, rather than something they do until they find a better option. That means making these jobs predominantly full-time with benefits, including paid sick days.
The government’s own staffing study — a response to the public inquiry into Elizabeth Wettlaufer’s nursing-home murders — addresses the importance of full-time work:
“Many staff and long-term care partners call for more full-time positions to allow for more stable working conditions, and to reduce the number of individuals working multiple part-time jobs. Increasing the proportion of full-time, permanent positions would improve working conditions for staff and reduce the likelihood of spreading viruses, such as COVID-19, between homes.”
That report, released last July, acknowledges that some staffing flexibility is needed. But it notes that the issue of benefits can create a “financial incentive to disproportionately hire part-time staff.”
If the government wasn’t paying attention then, the long-term care commission — its response to the horrific COVID death toll in Ontario’s care homes — repeated it in October.
“While all witnesses agreed on the need for staffing flexibility given the 24/7 nature of homes’ operations, more full-time positions must be created to ensure staffing stability and retention, and resident continuity of care.”
But here we are, six months later, and the Ford government is doing the exact opposite by reverting to part-time work at the earliest opportunity.
The pandemic didn’t create the staffing crisis in long-term care; it exacerbated and exposed long-standing problems.
Since then, Premier Doug Ford has hailed personal support workers as “heroes.” He has vowed to “correct decades of neglect.” And he has promised to “ensure this vital profession receives the respect it deserves.”
There’s a way to make good on those words. But forcing workers to cobble together a series of part-time jobs to make a living is not the way forward.
https://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/2021/04/27/the-ford-government-has-landed-on-the-wrong-fix-for-long-term-care-again.html
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