The Municipality of Chatham-Kent is taking ongoing steps to alleviate vacation-scheduling pressures at Riverview Gardens, the municipality’s long-term care facility.
“Last year at this time we developed short and long term strategies to deal with staffing issues and collective agreement language that, among other things, makes it difficult to approve all of the vacation requests for the summer season. The difficulty attracting and retaining personal support workers continues across the province and we have a meeting booked this week with Unifor regarding ongoing short and long term solutions to the issue,” said Chatham-Kent Chief Human Resources Officer Cathy Hoffman in a media release. “There has been a decline in the number of students entering PSW programs and that, coupled with normal turnover, has left us with fewer workers than we would like to have. We are currently working in partnership with Chatham-Kent’s Employment and Social Services, Riverview Gardens and the Workforce Planning Board on a study to examine this issue and generate sustainable solutions for the sector. This project is being funded by The Ministry of Advanced Skills and Development.”
She said residents’ care and safety has not been compromised, however, the current challenges have led to decreased flexibility in scheduling.
“Both management and the union continue to be committed to finding long-term solutions to these various problems,” she said. “We had some excellent discussions last year with Unifor about these matters and we’re optimistic about those already planned for this week again with Unifor.”
There are approximately 149 personal support workers at the facility, which has 320 residents.
