Anonymous
About Our Members
PERSONAL SUPPORT WORKERS
Ontario’s Personal Support Workers provide a range of health care services in a variety of settings: long-term care facilities; in the community for home care providers; in adult day programs; supportive housing settings; group homes; hospitals; educational facilities and many other settings. View the PSW Role Statement here.
The range of services provided by Personal Support Workers depends upon the individual needs of each person they support. Services include:
- Home management (Such as shopping, house cleaning and meal preparation)
- Personal care (such as dressing, personal hygiene, mobility and other routine activities of living in accordance with the Regulated Health Professions Act);
- Family responsibilities (such as routine care-giving to children)
- Social and recreational activities.
Personal support work is unique among health professions in that the scope of the PSW’s duties does not extend beyond what the client could do him/herself, if the client were physically/cognitively able. No other profession’s scope is similarly described.
As such, personal support is not a subset of another profession. Rather it includes skills and abilities performed by many other professions, but always within the overall scope of what the client would/could do if able to do the function.
Value to the System
Personal Support Workers make up a key portion of the health care workforce. The home care sector is heavily dependent on the Personal Support Workers. There are approximately 90,000 PSWs employed in Ontario, 57,000 of whom work in long-term care homes and approximately 26,000 of whom work in the community, the remainder are employed in hospitals. 80% of all home care services provided in Ontario is provided by personal support workers. (The Personal Support Worker Improving Work Experience a Comparison across Two Health Care Sectors, Dr. Brookman, 2007).
The development of the PSW curriculum was a joint initiative of the Ontario Government and the Ontario Community Support Association. The program was approved in April, 1997. Letter approving the course can be viewed here.
Instructors
PSW Instructors come from a variety of backgrounds. This group includes physiotherapists, occupational therapists and nurses as the subject matter dictates.
Instructors work with students in the classroom and in supervised practicum to give students the best possible opportunities for feedback and learning.
PSW training is offered by Ontario Community Colleges, Registered Private Career Colleges, Adult Education divisions of some Boards of Education and by not-for-profit organizations. All organizations providing this training base their programs on the document "Personal Support Worker Training: Outcomes and Module Outlines" which is published by the Ontario Community Support Association (OCSA).
The PSW training is arranged in modules with two official exit points:
- Personal Attendant – Completion of the first seven modules; responds to the needs of attendant care workers and the client/consumers they serve who wish to be active in directing their own care, and in training attendants to meet their individual needs; students who wish to confine their role to basic homemaking may also exit the program after the first seven modules.
- Personal Support Worker – Completion of the entire program (14 modules); responds to the needs of workers who require the full range of training to work with clients who have a wide variety of individual needs and varying degrees of ability to direct their services.
PSW Training Background
The Training Program and Standards
Ontario’s Personal Support Worker (PSW) training program is a single program that consolidates and replaces the former Health Care Aide, Home Support Worker Levels I, II and III, Personal Attendant and Respite Worker training programs. The Government of Ontario approved the PSW program on April 28, 1997.
PSWs work in long-term care facilities, for providers of home care services giving care to clients living their own homes in the community, in supportive housing settings, group homes and hospitals. PSWs also provide services in adult day programs, educational facilities and many other settings.
PSWs are unregulated health care worker. PSWs don’t have a provincial regulatory college. There is no recognized or required certification or registration examination for the Personal Support Worker. While there is no regulating body for graduates; a PSWs scope of practice is determined by the Regulated Health Professions Act as well as by her training.
PSW certificates are issued by the training institution.
The Development of the Personal Support Worker Curriculum
The development of the PSW curriculum was a joint initiative of the Ontario Government and the Ontario Community Support Association.
The curriculum was developed through a collaborative effort that included all stakeholders. A Training Resource Group with representation from employees in the system and their unions, consumers, students, employers and educators developed recommendations for provincial training standards and a model curriculum for workers providing personal care and support services in long-term care facilities and in clients’ homes.
OCSA and the Canadian Red Cross Society conducted pilot tests of the PSW training program across the province. More that 100 workers who were already employed by homemaking agencies took part. Pilot sites were a mix of seven rural and urban sites, using different training delivery models including the college system, a private vocational school, distance education and association-based and agency-based training.
In the course of pilot testing, new tools were developed: an evaluation plan, standardized evaluation instruments, a prior learning assessment tool and guideline, a technical literacy test, and a student record of learning. These tools have been published as the "Instructor’s Guide for the Personal Support Worker and the Personal Attendant Worker Program." This document is available from OCSA.
Supervisors, Client Coordinators and Managers
Supervisors and managers are those responsible for planning, directing, controlling an evaluating services, but not for delivering them. Many managers in health care have traditionally emerged from the ranks, where they were involved in direct clinical care.
Most of those classified as managers in health care work in hospitals, long term care and ambulatory services. Women make up just over half of the senior managers, with their numbers particularly high in long term care (59%) and social assistance (67%). Women are more common amongst those defined as lower level health care managers within institutions, where they account for 73% of the employed. Women are more likely to be managers in health care than in other sectors but, given that more than four out of five workers in care are women, they do not have a proportionate share of management jobs. Moreover, they are more likely to manage the smaller organizations and at lower levels.