(April 16, 2020)<\/p>\n
By: Anne Jarvis, Windsor Star<\/p>\n
They are the other front-line health care workers, the ones you don\u2019t hear about.<\/p>\n
Personal support workers provide the most basic care for the most vulnerable people, feeding, toileting and bathing the elderly and severely disabled.<\/p>\n
Yet for years we\u2019ve been driving them from their jobs with low pay, few benefits, part-time hours and little respect.<\/p>\n
Now suddenly, in the middle of the pandemic, we\u2019ve discovered they\u2019re essential.<\/p>\n
The people we should have valued but didn\u2019t \u2014 now we\u2019re literally begging for them.<\/p>\n
And still, we sent them into long-term care homes \u2014 where almost half of the more than 900 COVID-19 victims in Canada have died \u2014 without proper protection, and left them struggling to keep up.<\/p>\n
The way we treat them says volumes about our regard for the elderly.<\/p>\n
PSWs make up as much as 80 per cent of the staff at a long-term care home. They are the backbone of long-term care.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a hard job \u2014 lifting, feeding those with difficulty eating, dealing with dementia.<\/p>\n
There are never enough staff.<\/p>\n
Virtually every shift, every day at every long-term care home is short-staffed, according to the Ontario Health Coalition.<\/p>\n
Miranda Ferrier, president of the Canadian Support Workers Association, worked as a PSW for 11 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cI never worked a fully staffed shift,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Despite this, most PSWs are only part-time, so they need several jobs to cobble together a living \u2014 a practice that risks spreading infection among homes.<\/p>\n
And some are treated \u201clike absolute dirt,\u201d said Ferrier, chastised for taking sick days, harassed to work on their days off, guilted into taking extra shifts.<\/p>\n
For this, they are paid $17 to $23 an hour, with few benefits. Provincial funding for long-term care homes increased a measly one per cent last year.<\/p>\n
Now, after losing more staff during the pandemic, some of those left are caring for as many as 25 to 40 people.<\/p>\n
\u201cTons of overtime, a lot of doubles (double shifts),\u201d said Ferrier. Days off? \u201cThere is no time for days off right now \u2014 unless they go off with COVID-19.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I say they\u2019re operating in a battleground, I\u2019m not kidding,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The most basic care is getting done, but little else.<\/p>\n
Residents at Heron Terrace, where 10 residents and 10 staff are currently infected, used to get two or three baths a week. Now they get one.<\/p>\n
There is a \u201cmore efficient menu\u201d at mealtimes, meaning fewer choices and fewer foods prepared by hand.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re trying to get the gentlemen shaved,\u201d PSW Jennifer Cloutier said last week. \u201cWe got most of them done. Family were coming to the window. You try to make them presentable, but it\u2019s hard.\u201d<\/p>\n
PSWs are not only physically exhausted, they\u2019re mentally exhausted.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey feel guilty,\u201d said Cloutier.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s hard to not provide the care they believe residents deserve.<\/p>\n
And, said Monique Langlois, an independent PSW working at a long-term care home here, \u201cwe\u2019re scared.\u201d<\/p>\n
They\u2019re afraid of contracting the virus, of infecting their families, of infecting their frail residents.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re afraid of not being able to help residents who fall ill.<\/p>\n
Despite all this, there are small acts of great kindness.<\/p>\n
Staff at Heron Terrace used their own phones to help Barb Rideout FaceTime with her 97-year-old mother, Connie Broyd.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen she smiled, I knew she\u2019d seen me,\u201d said Rideout.<\/p>\n
Rideout would come to the window of her mother\u2019s room, and staff would open the blinds and move her mother\u2019s bed closer.<\/p>\n
The day her mother lay dying of COVID-19, the staff called Rideout, let her in, gowned and masked her and brought her to sit with her mother. They made her tea and offered her sandwiches.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe had not been speaking for nearly a year,\u201d Rideout remembered, \u201cbut she called out my name a couple of times, pulled my face down for a kiss and then placed my hands on her heart and slowly stopped breathing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Langlois knew she looked intimidating in full protective gear during an outbreak. So she put purple hearts on her face shield.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve got to use your imagination,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
She used to help her grandmother care for her great-grandmother. She\u2019d sit with her, braid her hair.<\/p>\n
\u201cI learned a lot about being a PSW from my grandmother,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Later, she helped care for her grandmother.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a call to duty,\u201d she said of her job. \u201cI hope someone will be there for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet, when Unifor called on long-term care homes to pay PSWs an extra $3 an hour during the pandemic, only one here did, Heron Terrace.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s no wonder many PSWs have been leaving their jobs to work in factories, retail stores, even fast food restaurants.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you\u2019re run off your feet, and you don\u2019t have time to spend with your residents, it doesn\u2019t feed your passion,\u201d acknowledged John Scotland, CEO of Heron Terrace.<\/p>\n
Ontario was to announce more money for long-term care staff Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The question is, what will happen after the pandemic? Our population is aging. PSWs are essential all the time.<\/p>\n