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'We’re all really scared': Province stays mum on LTC, congregate-care employees who also work in schools
"I lose sleep over this daily," one worker says.
Author of the article:
Taylor Blewett
Publishing date:
Aug 31, 2020 • Last Updated 11 hours ago • 5 minute read
Faceshields, hand sanitizer and masks sit ready on a teacher's desk in a classroom. PHOTO BY PAUL CHIASSON /THE CANADIAN PRESS
When Ontario children trudge home at the end of the school day, a number of school board staff who spent the day supporting these students will head off to other locations and clock in to secondary jobs in long-term care homes and other congregate-living facilities.
It’s longstanding industry practice, born of financial necessity, that’s setting off alarm bells at a time when a deadly, contagious disease is barely subdued.
And, despite all the talk of bubbles and cohorts and an iron ring around the vulnerable, the province has not revealed specific plans to address the possibility of COVID-19 transmission via concurrent employment in education and congregate care.
“I lose sleep over this daily,” said Jane, an Ottawa woman who works in the developmental services sector and asked that her real name not be used for fear of professional reprisal. She estimates that about half of her colleagues — her agency employs several hundred — also work for school boards and are planning to return to those jobs this fall.
“Everybody needs the money,” Jane said. “It’s really discouraging because I know what’s going to happen. I know that as soon as those schools open … that these elderly and vulnerable people are going to start dying again.”
In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the virus was spreading through congregate-living facilities at breakneck speed, the Ontario government took steps to restrict the employment of long-term care and retirement-home workers to single residences and other congregate-care employees to residences operated by a single agency in their sector to reduce transmission of the virus between different facilities.
Although these restrictions remain in effect, they contain nothing that would prevent long-term care, retirement-home or congregate-care employees from working second jobs in fields outside health care, such as education.
When asked by this newspaper, the province could not point to any specific measures it had taken to try to prevent the spread of COVID-19 between schools and congregate care by workers with jobs in both, and declined to comment directly on the matter.
Compared to the peak of the first wave of COVID-19, when institutional outbreaks of the virus across Ontario claimed dozens of lives on a daily basis, the situation has stabilized.
There were just 12 ongoing outbreaks in long-term care and 16 in retirement homes as of Friday. Transmission overall was about 100 new cases daily, when it was once five times that.
What keeps Jane up at night is that this progress — fragile and hard-won — could be jeopardized this fall if workers are travelling, unchecked, between schools and congregate-living facilities and inadvertently bringing COVID-19 with them. Twice she emailed Premier Doug Ford about her concerns, but she had yet to receive a response as of Friday.
“We’re all really scared for these people that we support.”
Without provincial direction, employers are navigating the situation on their own.
Jocelyne Paul, executive director of Ottawa-Carleton Lifeskills, calls it a “challenging question” that her agency and others have been looking at. OCL operates eight residential group homes and employs about 180 front-line staff. They’ve asked anyone who’ll also be working for a school board to inform HR and to provide immediate updates if a school where they’re working has an outbreak of COVID-19.
At the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, Ottawa’s largest, there are no rules “prohibiting staff from working in external locations, and we have not received any direction from public health or the Ministry that this measure should be taken,” the board said in a statement sent to this newspaper. “According to legal advice received, we are unable to impose these types of restrictions on employees in the absence of a specific public health directive.”
Laura Walton is president of CUPE’s Ontario School Board Council of Unions. A “significant portion” of the 55,000 education workers she represents hold multiple jobs to make a living, many of them education assistants and early childhood educators with secondary employment in the developmental-services and long-term care sectors because of how transferrable the requisite skills are.
“We have raised it (with the ministry), and said, ‘What do we do?'” Walton said. “At this point, there doesn’t seem to be any indication”
Walton has her own ideas about why Ontario appears reluctant to engage on the issue of employees working simultaneously in education and congregate care.
“This is an indication of just how low-paid these jobs are,” she said. “For far too long, this government and previous governments have chosen to balance books on the backs of public services … And I think, as a result, they’re a little bit more hesitant to actually address the issue that they know they themselves have created.”
There’s also no easy solution. If the province was to mandate that these workers choose just one job, their financial security would take a serious hit.
“You can’t blame the individuals, who are simply trying to cobble together a living,” said Harvey Bischof, president of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation. “It’s something that’s very difficult for us to tackle other than to advocate for an increase in pay that would prevent them from having to double up on work in that fashion.”
Harvey Bischof, president of the Ontario Secondary School Teacher’s Federation. PHOTO BY POSTMEDIA FILES
Barring a worker from employment in both education and congregate care would also cost one of their employers precious human resources, essential for preventing a resurgence of COVID-19.
“Our staffing situation is critical right now, and it is the thing that keeps us up at night,” said Donna Duncan, CEO of the Ontario Long-Term Care Association. With temporary solutions to LTC staffing shortages winding down — the redeployment of hospital and school board staff, the hiring of post-secondary students on summer break, the “pandemic pay” wage boost — “anything that takes any more people out of our system, just makes us that much more vulnerable.”
Among unions and employers, there’s a common belief that a total crackdown on dual employment in schools and congregate care would do more harm than good, but that doesn’t mean the situation should be ignored, Bischof said.
“There needs to be a solution that safeguards students, safeguards the people in the other congregate-care settings, safeguards the families that these people go home to, but doesn’t punish the individuals by depriving them of the ability to make a living,” he said.
“It would be absolutely irresponsible for anybody to stick their head in the sand when this issue has been raised.”
ottawacitizen.com
"I lose sleep over this daily," one worker says.
Author of the article:
Taylor Blewett
Publishing date:
Aug 31, 2020 • Last Updated 11 hours ago • 5 minute read
Faceshields, hand sanitizer and masks sit ready on a teacher's desk in a classroom. PHOTO BY PAUL CHIASSON /THE CANADIAN PRESS
When Ontario children trudge home at the end of the school day, a number of school board staff who spent the day supporting these students will head off to other locations and clock in to secondary jobs in long-term care homes and other congregate-living facilities.
It’s longstanding industry practice, born of financial necessity, that’s setting off alarm bells at a time when a deadly, contagious disease is barely subdued.
And, despite all the talk of bubbles and cohorts and an iron ring around the vulnerable, the province has not revealed specific plans to address the possibility of COVID-19 transmission via concurrent employment in education and congregate care.
“I lose sleep over this daily,” said Jane, an Ottawa woman who works in the developmental services sector and asked that her real name not be used for fear of professional reprisal. She estimates that about half of her colleagues — her agency employs several hundred — also work for school boards and are planning to return to those jobs this fall.
“Everybody needs the money,” Jane said. “It’s really discouraging because I know what’s going to happen. I know that as soon as those schools open … that these elderly and vulnerable people are going to start dying again.”
In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the virus was spreading through congregate-living facilities at breakneck speed, the Ontario government took steps to restrict the employment of long-term care and retirement-home workers to single residences and other congregate-care employees to residences operated by a single agency in their sector to reduce transmission of the virus between different facilities.
Although these restrictions remain in effect, they contain nothing that would prevent long-term care, retirement-home or congregate-care employees from working second jobs in fields outside health care, such as education.
When asked by this newspaper, the province could not point to any specific measures it had taken to try to prevent the spread of COVID-19 between schools and congregate care by workers with jobs in both, and declined to comment directly on the matter.
Compared to the peak of the first wave of COVID-19, when institutional outbreaks of the virus across Ontario claimed dozens of lives on a daily basis, the situation has stabilized.
There were just 12 ongoing outbreaks in long-term care and 16 in retirement homes as of Friday. Transmission overall was about 100 new cases daily, when it was once five times that.
What keeps Jane up at night is that this progress — fragile and hard-won — could be jeopardized this fall if workers are travelling, unchecked, between schools and congregate-living facilities and inadvertently bringing COVID-19 with them. Twice she emailed Premier Doug Ford about her concerns, but she had yet to receive a response as of Friday.
“We’re all really scared for these people that we support.”
Without provincial direction, employers are navigating the situation on their own.
Jocelyne Paul, executive director of Ottawa-Carleton Lifeskills, calls it a “challenging question” that her agency and others have been looking at. OCL operates eight residential group homes and employs about 180 front-line staff. They’ve asked anyone who’ll also be working for a school board to inform HR and to provide immediate updates if a school where they’re working has an outbreak of COVID-19.
At the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, Ottawa’s largest, there are no rules “prohibiting staff from working in external locations, and we have not received any direction from public health or the Ministry that this measure should be taken,” the board said in a statement sent to this newspaper. “According to legal advice received, we are unable to impose these types of restrictions on employees in the absence of a specific public health directive.”
Laura Walton is president of CUPE’s Ontario School Board Council of Unions. A “significant portion” of the 55,000 education workers she represents hold multiple jobs to make a living, many of them education assistants and early childhood educators with secondary employment in the developmental-services and long-term care sectors because of how transferrable the requisite skills are.
“We have raised it (with the ministry), and said, ‘What do we do?'” Walton said. “At this point, there doesn’t seem to be any indication”
Walton has her own ideas about why Ontario appears reluctant to engage on the issue of employees working simultaneously in education and congregate care.
“This is an indication of just how low-paid these jobs are,” she said. “For far too long, this government and previous governments have chosen to balance books on the backs of public services … And I think, as a result, they’re a little bit more hesitant to actually address the issue that they know they themselves have created.”
There’s also no easy solution. If the province was to mandate that these workers choose just one job, their financial security would take a serious hit.
“You can’t blame the individuals, who are simply trying to cobble together a living,” said Harvey Bischof, president of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation. “It’s something that’s very difficult for us to tackle other than to advocate for an increase in pay that would prevent them from having to double up on work in that fashion.”
Harvey Bischof, president of the Ontario Secondary School Teacher’s Federation. PHOTO BY POSTMEDIA FILES
Barring a worker from employment in both education and congregate care would also cost one of their employers precious human resources, essential for preventing a resurgence of COVID-19.
“Our staffing situation is critical right now, and it is the thing that keeps us up at night,” said Donna Duncan, CEO of the Ontario Long-Term Care Association. With temporary solutions to LTC staffing shortages winding down — the redeployment of hospital and school board staff, the hiring of post-secondary students on summer break, the “pandemic pay” wage boost — “anything that takes any more people out of our system, just makes us that much more vulnerable.”
Among unions and employers, there’s a common belief that a total crackdown on dual employment in schools and congregate care would do more harm than good, but that doesn’t mean the situation should be ignored, Bischof said.
“There needs to be a solution that safeguards students, safeguards the people in the other congregate-care settings, safeguards the families that these people go home to, but doesn’t punish the individuals by depriving them of the ability to make a living,” he said.
“It would be absolutely irresponsible for anybody to stick their head in the sand when this issue has been raised.”
'We’re all really scared': Province stays mum on LTC, congregate-care employees who also work in schools
"I lose sleep over this daily," one worker says.
