Efforts to bolster the roster of professionals who work in the city’s home-care sector are paying off as the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority celebrates the addition of hundreds of new employees.
Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara said Monday that 256 health-care aides have been hired by WRHA since February, when the city had a 24 per cent vacancy rate among home care workers.
“Home care is about providing dignified, compassionate services to the folks who need it most,” Asagwara said in a news release.
NIC ADAM / FREE PRESS
Winnipeg Regional Health Authority Community Area Director Luba Bereza at the uncertified health care aide, or UHCA, ceremony held at the Masonic Memorial Centre on Monday afternoon.
“The WRHA has put in a huge effort to recruit home-care workers and it’s paying off. It’s all good news: fewer vacancies, more visits and less frustrating cancellations for people.”
The reinforcements more than halved the vacancy rate for health-care aides who provide home care, and reduced the rate of service cancellations from five per cent (January 2023) to 1.38 per cent (April 2024). The average number of monthly home-care visits increased to 445,000 from 384,000 in roughly the same time period.
Some of the new employees are certified health-care aides, while others are graduates of an uncertified home care attendant training program that was launched as part of a recruitment campaign in January 2023.
The program included two weeks of classroom instruction and two weeks of practical experience. Participants were trained on how to use equipment, perform lifts and bed-to-wheelchair transfers, and administer medication.
By the end of the four weeks, the uncertified workers were to be doing the same jobs and providing an equal level of service as certified health-care aides, WRHA has said.
More than 300 people have completed the program, said Luba Bereza, WRHA’s director of centralized home care services.
Many of the graduates are newcomers to Canada who have medical experience in their home countries. Through the WRHA, they have access to educational bridging programs that will allow them to become certified health-care aides or transition to other medical positions, Bereza said.
The health region celebrated the hiring push with an event at the Masonic Memorial Centre on Corydon Avenue Monday.
Graduate Matthew Jacobi, who left a job in pharmacy to take the training, was inspired to switch to home care after caring for his grandparents.
“Home care is life changing (for seniors) because it helps them remain in their own homes,” Jacobi said. “It provides people with an opportunity to remain independent and I think they have a better quality of life… I feel proud to be a part of that.”
NIC ADAM / FREE PRESS
Matthew Jacobi, 33, is a graduate of the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority’s UHCA program.
Jacobi said he intends to access the bridging programs offered by the WRHA to increase his education and become a licenced practical nurse, with the ultimate goal of becoming a registered nurse.
Shannon McAteer, health-care co-ordinator for CUPE Local 204, said the union, which represents home care workers, is pleased about the new hires, but the sector still needs more support.
“We are still understaffed. The staff, they are working very hard but they are tired and burning out. They’ve been keeping (home care) afloat for a long time,” McAteer said.
The union leader said she is concerned that some graduates from the training program will not have the same experience as certified health-care workers, who typically have at least six months of formal education.
“That places an additional burden on existing health-care aides in the system because their actual practical training is coming from them,” she said.
“It’s a great beginning, but we… would like to see certified health-care aides, that’s the ideal.”
tyler.searle@freepress.mb.ca
Tyler Searle
Reporter
Tyler Searle is a multimedia producer who writes for the Free Press‘s city desk. A graduate of Red River College Polytechnic’s creative communications program, he wrote for the Stonewall Teulon Tribune, Selkirk Record and Express Weekly News before joining the paper in 2022. Read more about Tyler.
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