Seniors home staffing crisis looms in B.C., report warns
Report predicts industry will be short about 2,800 workers in 5 years
Coming a month after complaints surfaced about a lack of staff at a Summerland seniors home, a new report suggests the elder-care industry will be even more strapped for workers in the years ahead.
The report, titled “Situation Critical,” was prepared by the BC Care Providers Association, which represents 300 private-sector care facilities with about 27,000 residents and 18,000 employees across the province.
Based on the greying population, the report predicts 36,000 new jobs for care aides will be created by 2027 in a sector that is expected to be short about 2,800 workers within the next five years.
Daniel Fontaine, CEO of BC Care Providers, suggested the 10point action plan assembled by his group represents the best chance to fill the jobs and maintain patient safety.
“We will not be able to address this simply by using a domestic strategy and training our way out of this,” he said.
One of the suggestions in the report is improving safety programs to keep care aides at work. Fontaine estimated 450 of them are off the job right now due to injuries.
“If those people had not been injured on the job, we would have 450 more people in the system. That’s something we can work on,” he said.
Another recommendation involves changing the title of care aide to something like nurse’s aide to give the career more cache among foreign workers.
Other suggestions range from better promoting benefits of a career in the industry and streamlining the process for transferring out-of-country credentials to making the profession a dual-credit program for high school students.
“My view is we’re kind of done doing the analysis and task forces and reports, and we need to get moving,” said Fontaine. “The time for action is now.” Health Minister Adrian Dix said nothing in the report came as a surprise to him, because the NDP government began tackling the issues in its 2018 budget, which set aside $548 million over three years to improve care at seniors homes.
Measures include increased funding to lift the staff time per patient in publicly subsidized beds to 3.36 hours per day from 3.15 hours, while the government also put up cash to create 427 new seats in care aide training programs at colleges across B.C.
“That in itself isn’t sufficient, but it’s the beginning of a response,” said Dix.
The minister also confirmed he is keeping a close eye on Summerland Seniors Village.
The state of patient care at the facility entered the public sphere in May when MP Dan Albas raised the issue in the House of Commons, suggesting a decline in staffing was related to ownership of parent company Retirement Concepts being sold to Chinese interests.
Contrary to what patients’ families said, however, Interior Health insisted no major concerns had been found in a recent licensing inspection.
Such facilities are required to provide Interior Health with staffing data to ensure they’re meeting licensing standards, but a spokesperson said Summerland Seniors Village’s numbers for this spring won’t be available until July, following a quality review.
Dix said the province will be “vigorously enforcing” legislation related to care standards if required, and is also reviewing the purchase of Retirement Concepts to determine if the change of ownership has any licensing implications.