Question Period Note: FEDERAL SUPPORT FOR TRAINING PERSONAL SUPPORT WORKERS

The shortage of Personal Support Workers (PSWs) in the long-term and home care systems has been a growing issue for several years, particularly in the context of an aging population, and exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

We are funding a $38.5 million pilot project to address labour shortages in long-term and home care.

This pilot project will recruit and train up to 2,600 new Supportive Care Assistants through an accelerated online training and hands-on work placement and support up to 1,300 of them to pursue full personal support worker certification.

The pilot has also produced a National Occupational Standard for personal support workers. It serves as a set of voluntary guidelines to create workplace standards and develop training curriculum across jurisdictions.

Together, these measures will help to alleviate critical labour shortages and improve working conditions for personal support workers.

If pressed on progress towards mandate letter commitment to work with the Minister of Health and provinces and territories to train up to 50,000 new PSWs…

Implementing the mandate letter commitment to train up to 50,000 PSWs is an ambitious challenge:

It represents a doubling of the current number of trained PSWs over three years, and 15% growth in the PSW field overall.

The pandemic has highlighted broader issues within the field that lead to difficulties within the profession to recruit and retain workers, including low pay and benefits, low public perception of the occupation, chronic understaffing, stress, burnout, and challenging working conditions.

P/Ts hold the majority of the levers required, including jurisdiction over health and regulation of occupations, as well as authority over the existing training infrastructure.

For us to succeed in achieving our target, we need governments across Canada to mobilize to address systemic changes. This could include, for example, exploring how laddering and specialization opportunities (e.g., mental health, palliative care) could lead to potential advancement and wage increases as well as to help with recruitment and retention.

The long-term and home care pilot project is part of a holistic approach that our Government is taking to support PSWs. Other actions include:

Three projects underway from Future Skills that will support PSWs.

Federal transfers to P/Ts, including the Labour Market Transfer Agreements that train approximately 2,500 PSWs each year.

Budget 2023 announced $117M to ensure the prosperity of official language minority communities, including by training bilingual nurses and PSWs.

As announced in the 2020 Fall Economic Statement, ESDC is funding a $38.5M pilot project to help address labour shortages in long-term and home care.

Launched in December 2020, the Long-Term and Home Care pilot will:

test a new recruitment and training model for Supportive Care Assistants (accelerated 6-week online training program, followed by a paid work placement);

develop a career advancement pathway to assist new workers to upgrade their micro-credential to a full PSW certificate; and

explore how to improve consistency in PSW training programs, qualifications, and competencies, with the goal of developing a proposed competency framework and National Occupational Standard.

As of September 11, 2023, there were 1,764 reserved seats for the pilot project, with more than 2,000 students in online training. In addition, 1,275 students are in paid work placements, 563 have already graduated and 96 are pursuing PSW certification.

Additionally, as part of the pilot project, a National Occupational Standard (NOS) for PSWs was developed and published by Colleges and Institutes Canada in November 2022. Its intent is to serve as a set of voluntary guidelines to address skills gaps and inconsistencies across jurisdictions. The NOS is meant to serve as a reference point to help employees, employers, and educators understand what workers are required to do within their role. It can be used as a guideline to create workplace standards, performance expectations, and as the basis for developing training curriculum.

As well, through Labour Market Transfer Agreements with provinces and territories, it is estimated that approximately 2,500 PSWs are trained each year.

While the Government of Canada recognizes provincial and territorial jurisdiction in this sector, it can play an important role to help address skills and training priorities. These initiatives are meant to supplement, not duplicate, provincial or territorial efforts already underway in the supportive care sector.

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