Exploring experiences of Personal Support Worker education in Ontario, Canada

Abstract

There is growing attention to the training and education of Personal Support Workers, or PSWs, who work in community, home and long-term care settings supporting older people and people with disabilities. In Ontario, Canada, amid a volatile policy landscape, the provincial government launched an effort to standardise PSW education. Using qualitative methods, this study considered the question: What are the central educational issues reflected by students, working PSWs and key informants, and are they addressed by the PSW programme and training standards? Phase one was a public domain analysis completed between January and March 2014 and updated for major developments after that period. Phase two, completed between August 2014 and March 2015, included 15 key informant interviews and focus group discussions and mini-phone interviews with 35 working PSWs and current PSW students. According to the participants, the central educational issues are: casualisation of labour that is not conveyed in educational recruitment efforts, disconnect between theory and working conditions, overemphasis on long-term care as a career path, and variability of PSW education options. While the standards should help to address the final issue, they do not address the other key issues raised, which have to do with the structural organisation of work. There is thus a disconnect between the experiences of students, PSWs and key informants and the policy decisions surrounding this sector. This is particularly significant as education is often touted as a panacea for issues in long-term and community care. In fact, the curriculum of some of the PSW programmes, especially those in public college settings, is robust. Yet, the underlying issues will remain barring a structural overhaul of the organisation of long-term and community care sectors founded on a social revaluing of older people and the gendered work of care.

Questioning “choice”: A multinational metasynthesis of research on directly funded home‐care programs for older people

“…Yet again, even if choice for workers were incorporated in such discourses, it will not serve as a panacea for issues in home care. For instance, a more balanced approach to choice in DF that focuses on hiring and scheduling workers still does not offer solutions to worker shortages, high turnover, policy efforts to standardise care worker credentials and education (Kelly, ), or challenging working conditions such as precarity, invisibility, lack of reporting infrastructure for cases of harassment, lack of “back up” workers for sick days, split shifts, and unpaid transportation to rural locales. “Choice” also provides little space for dealing with dilemmas in which clients’ preferences conflict with workers’ preferences.…”

Community‐based personal support workers' satisfaction with job‐related training at the organization in Ontario, Canada: Implications for future training

“…The findings on formal education from this project indicate PSWs pursue their formal education through a diversity of avenues with the community and private career colleges providing the majority of this education. This coupled with the findings from the literature that the formal education of PSWs lacks an emphasis on the community client population, 46 and no standardized direction to employers on education requirements and on‐site training 38 point to the importance of examining the factors influencing the satisfaction of PSWs with organizational training.…”

“…In a research study that explored the education experiences of PSWs in Ontario, a disconnect was found between many of the concepts and techniques learned in their formal education compared to the reality of workplace settings. Placements were almost exclusively in LTC settings as were the course content examples provided by PSW instructors 46 . These results have implications for home and community care organizations who need to ensure that newly hired PSW graduates have the skills and knowledge necessary to provide care to home and community care clients.…”

“…Placements were almost exclusively in LTC settings as were the course content examples provided by PSW instructors. 46 These results have implications for home and community care organizations who need to ensure that newly hired PSW graduates have the skills and knowledge necessary to provide care to home and community care clients. Research has also indicated that there is a trend whereby more complex tasks formally carried out by regulated health care providers such as registered practical nurses are being carried out by unregulated health care providers.…”

Personal Support Workers in Canada: The New Precariat?

“…This lack of consistent educational requirement and associated low education levels in comparison to other paid front-line healthcare providers contributes to the low human capital, market value and status of PSWs. However, the quality of education in Canada does not alone contribute to low PSW status, as key issues related to PSW status and market value remain even where there are robust PSW educational programs ( Kelly 2017 ). The structure of Canada's neo-liberal healthcare system, with its related power dynamics in terms of occupational hierarchies and differences by sector, may play a major role in perpetuating the low status of PSWs ( Lilly 2008 ).…”