Living Learning Caring a Trinity to Build On Presentation to the 12 th Annual Educational Conference Canadian Association of Continuing Care Educators

Context Various titles: Personal Care Worker, Personal Support Worker, Personal Attendant or in some cases Homemakers. Carry out most (70–80%) of all paid home care work in the country Workforce is estimated at over 180,000 people working as PSWs or in similar roles

In Canada, these workers are women, predominantly (96%) of the workforce Broadly, PSWs reflect the ethnic and racial diversity of Canada Visible minorities are over-represented among PSWs, making up 42% of this labour force PSWs work in a wide range of settings

Role of PSWs in Providing Care Approximately three-quarters of direct care staff in Ontario’s LTC sector are Personal Support Workers (PSWs) (MOHLTC, 2012). Expansion of tasks performed by PSWs, incl. delegated tasks such as catheterization and injection (home/community) (Berta et al 2013) Despite their importance, relatively little is known about them. They are also an older labour force (Lum 2013) so questions of longevity come into play

Living

Work-life balance is basically the positive relationship between work and other equally important activities in life which include family leisure.

Demanding Labour The aging of the health care labour force, combined with the changing population in health services may explain some of the high rates of work absences due to illness and injury. This may be the case especially in long-term residential care where the largest proportion of workers is in the oldest age groups and where health care workers do some of the most physically demanding labour. However, our international comparative data on personal support workers (PSWs) suggest a more complex explanation.. Pat Armstrong, PHD, FRSC, York University

Demanding Labour Rates of physical violence are very high for Canadian PSWs. Canadians compared to Scandinavians are also twice as likely to experience physical exhaustion on a daily basis, four times as likely to experience mental exhaustion and three times as likely to almost always experience back pain Workload and staffing levels are factors Canadians are almost three times as likely as their Scandinavian counterparts to report that they work short-staffed on a daily basis

A Comprehensive Strategy on Workplace Health Promotion is needed! Especially for this workforce. A tremendous need to design wellness programs that take into account workforce demographics, job characteristics and health status.

Learning

Beyond the Program Lifelong learning can enhance our understanding of the world around us, provide us with more and better opportunities and improve our quality of life. Boosts our confidence and self-esteem Helps us achieve a more satisfying personal life Makes us less risk averse and more adaptable to change when it happens Challenges our ideas and beliefs

Caring

Nel Noddings – “when we engage in caring encounters perhaps the first thing we discover about ourselves is that we are receptive; we are attentive in a special way’. Receptive attention is an essential characteristic of a caring encounter. The carer is open to what the cared- for is saying and might be experiencing and is able to reflect upon it. Caring involves connection between the carer and the cared-for and a degree of reciprocity; that is to say that both gain from the encounter in different ways and both give.

The key, central to care theory, is this: caring-about (or, perhaps a sense of justice) must be seen as instrumental in establishing the conditions under which caring-for can flourish. Although the preferred form of caring is cared-for, caring-about can help in establishing, maintaining, and enhancing it. Those who care about others in the justice sense must keep in mind that the objective is to ensure that caring actually occurs. Caring-about is empty if it does not culminate in caring relations. (Noddings 2002: 23-4)

The Future has several names. For the weak, it is Impossible. For the fainthearted, it is Unknown. For the thoughtful and valiant, it is IDEAL. Victor Hugo