How the hunt for profits has shaped Ontario's home care system

The value of care work

Dyana Forshner-Juby is a personal support worker (PSW) with over 25 years of experience working in Ontario's care sector. She works in Belleville for CarePartners, an agency that is contracted by the provincial government to provide home care services.

The work is demanding, unstable and low-paying.

Forshner-Juby and her colleagues often drive long distances to visit patients at home -- generally seniors, but also younger people with disabilities. They provide personal care including feeding, showering and toileting people, but are increasingly tasked with responsibilities traditionally handled by nurses.

About 60 per cent of the 3,000 CarePartners workers represented by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) earn $16.50 per hour. Workers say they often earn less than minimum wage as they don't get hourly wages when travelling between clients, while still accruing expenses for gas and car maintenance.

Scheduling is unpredictable and unstable. Several back-to-back home visits may be followed by hours of no work -- time when workers must be available for their employer but which goes unpaid. As a result, workers tend to pick up shifts during off-hours.

"They will give you five or six hours, sometimes eight," says Gloria Turney, who works shifts at a local hospital to supplement her income.

"But there are days when they give you one hour, there are days when they give you two."

Forshner-Juby mentions a colleague who recently had to visit her local food bank.

"She's got four children and she's a single mom," she says. "She couldn't count on her hours and then her car broke down and that's pretty much wiped her out. And she had to rent a car so she could continue to work."

Unsurprisingly, staff turnover is high.

https://rabble.ca/news/2020/01/how-hunt-profits-has-shaped-ontarios-home-care-system?fbclid=IwAR37myKCm2i4IBPQanBxTKJyvm-KP5BTeJCMaGCtvk1FCsWQE96E7Tn4PQo