The urgency for trained personal support workers (PSWs) amid COVID-19 has allowed George Brown College (GBC) students the opportunity to receive work experience in their fields prior to graduation.

GBC’s Sally Horsfall Eaton School of Nursing and the Rekai Centres in Toronto have teamed up to provide students the required hands-on experiences they need to begin their careers in personal support work, before graduating this December.

COVID-19 had temporarily impeded students in the Personal Support Worker program from getting their required work experience in the previous Spring 2020 semester. GBC and the Rekai Centres, however, were passionate about changing operations and finding a way to make things work for the students.

“George Brown was the only one out of all my academic partners who grabbed on to it. Who thought ‘Yeah, I think we can accommodate. I think we can change things around,’” says Barbara Michalik, director of community and academic partnership at the Rekai Centres.

In order to accommodate for all of the 46 PSW students from the Spring 2020 semester, the students were divided up into three separate blocks of three-to-four-week intervals. Currently, the Rekai Centre is in their third block of students.

According to Michilak, out of the first wave of students, six out of the eight were hired on for full-time employment at long-term care centres.

The work experience program is designed as a residency model, where students are at their placements four days a week from Monday to Thursday, completing eight-hour shifts. On Fridays, they complete their online learning tasks.

“What’s very intriguing for this particular group during COVID-19, is that because they’re in a residency model, they’re not here one day a week and then come back the next week. They get to see the full picture of the residence. They get to see them when they’re happy, when they’re not happy, how they transform during the day,” says Michalik.

“It’s not something that they forget, they see it four days a week. That’s the innovation here.”

The Rekai Centres have also provided work experiences to GBC’s Social Service Worker, Activation and Recreation, and Practical Nursing (RPN) programs. Michalik believes these opportunities are essential for preparing students in this line of work.

“You really get the hands-on reality of long-term care. You don’t get everything from a textbook. You have mental health, responsive behaviours, all of these other conditions, that, until you see it, a textbook doesn’t give you that visual,” says Michalik. “We’re doing our best to make sure people graduate, to make sure people get employed.”

Along with jobs waiting for PSW students come graduation, The Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Long-Term Care is also providing a $5,000 incentive to PSWs graduates whose diplomas are conferred after April 1, 2020 and commit to a six-month employment contract in a long-term care facility or home.