A new plan is in place to train more personal support workers (PSW) to care for people who live at the Prescott and Russell Residence in Hawkesbury.
The facility is owned and operated by the United Counties of Prescott and Russell and is currently in the process of constructing a new residence on Spence Avenue in Hawkesbury at a cost of $75.7 million which will have 224 beds.
Residence Administrator Eric Larocque has developed a program to train PSW’s both in-person and online for employment at the facility. In the online program, three cohorts will train and graduate each year for the next three years. Practical work for online students will be done on the job at the Residence.
“We’ll try to hire locally as well as internationally,” Larocque said.
The students will be hired for employment at the Residence before they begin their course. New high school graduates or people looking for a career change are welcome.
A retired staff member has agreed to return to teach the classes. Larocque said training as a PSW at the Residence is an alternative for students who may otherwise train at a community college.
“The big difference is, we’re going to hire them,” he said.
“We’ll have a job for them right away,” Larocque remarked.
He believes hiring and training PSW’s in-house will help keep them on the job at the Residence.
“Retention wise, that’s going to be much better for us,” Larocque commented.
Once they complete training, the PSW’s will also have the opportunity to pursue further training and career advancement as Registered Practical Nurses (RPN), or Registered Nurses (RN).
PSW training at the Prescott and Russell Residence will be free for students.
“Everything is at no cost,” Larocque emphasized.
To cover the cost of providing the course, $280,000 from the 2023 UCPR budget will be used. Those funds exist largely because of surplus wages due to the current staff shortage at the Residence. Additional funding from the Ontario Ministry of Long-Term Care will also be used.
The online PSW training is set to begin in July 2023. The in-person program at the Residence is to begin in September 2023.
Recruitment for the PSW training program is being conducted through the Employment Services Centre of Prescott-Russell. Larocque said the program is designed to train 25 new PSW’s each year for the next three years.
The new PSW’s will be needed at the new Residence, which is to be completed in spring, 2024. It will have 78 more beds than the existing Cartier Boulevard facility and will provide four additional hours of resident care each day.
As of June 2023, the new Residence was projected to have $2.8 million in additional costs due to changes in the type of furnishings required to meet provincial regulations.
“We know there will be a cost increase,” Larocque acknowledged.
He said the interest rate on the mortgage the UCPR will have for the new Residence will be known as of June 4, 2024 when the regional government takes possession of the facility from Colliers, the company managing the project. The UCPR has financed the construction of the new Residence with a loan from Infrastructure Ontario, the public works financing agency of the Ontario government.
For PSW’s, work will be easier for resident care at the new facility because each room will have a lift installed to safely move immobile individuals.
“That’s going to make a big difference,” Larocque said.
He explained how current long-term care facility residents are generally in more serious physical condition than in years past because they have lived in their own homes longer before moving to a facility. Larocque noted that residents at the Prescott and Russell Residence were much younger and there was even a parking lot for residents to park their cars in when the current premises opened in 1978.
