BARRIE, ONT. -- Dozens of personal support workers in training at Georgian College will soon get to work months earlier than planned.
They are enrolled in an accelerated PSW program funded by Queen's Park, which condenses eight months of learning into six months. In February, the government announced it would cover tuition and ancillary fees for PSW students to help with a staffing shortage across the province.
There are about 40 PSW vacancies around Simcoe County right now.
Many PSWs have left the field during the pandemic, and long-term care homes have been struggling to find enough people to fill the positions. With more funding, the government hopes to train 8,000 new PSWs across Ontario by the end of the year.
But the head of the advocacy group Can Age says PSWs need better pay and benefits to keep them in the field.
"We are worried they will again spend about 18 months in the positions and then leave, so we need to fix not only people in the pipeline, we need to get them to stay too," says President and CEO Laura Tamblyn Watts.
