This video was produced in September/October 2010 as a report on the findings from the Keeping the ‘home’ in home care project.
I interviewed nineteen home care clients, 9 family members and 8 Saint Elizabeth Personal Support Workers (PSWs) between November 2009 and April 2010 to identify what aspects of personal support and its delivery clients regard as positive and what aspects they would rather see changed.
Home care clients and their family members are, overall, very satisfied with the personal support services they receive, and they hold personal support workers in very high regard for their assistance, their dedication and their care. They understand that personal support workers are under significant time and resource pressures, and they were willing to work with their PSWs (and supervisors) to improve care.
Furthermore, they understand personal support as something that goes well beyond policy makers’ goal of cost-effective care; they understand and expect the personal support care they receive to be of better quality than the care they perceive is delivered in long-term care homes, and to be care that recognizes and honours them as people with lives, histories and futures, not simply treating them as people with bathing or mealtime needs.
For their part, PSWs enjoy the work they do, care about the clients they serve, and understand that what they do for clients goes well beyond a set of assigned tasks. They understand that the manner in which they complete their work often is more important than the tasks, and it appears that PSWs instinctively understand the expectations of their clients in the two areas identified in this study: better quality care and affirmation of their clients and their “homes”.
Nonetheless, there were a number of areas in which the organization and delivery of personal support care compromises clients’ satisfaction with the care they receive. Several of these observations have appeared elsewhere in the academic literature. In the attached document, they are summarized as a set of opportunities for improvement of personal support services at the level of an organization that provides personal support services, and at the level of the PSW – to emphasize what is good about personal support services and to reform the aspects clients and family members find not so good.
This video was produced in January 2012 to support the introduction of a best practice for Personal Support Workers to engage home care clients in their personal support services. It is intended to be used with a training package, but can also be used to illustrate different home care clients’ views of how much they value the “small extras” that Personal Support Workers provide.
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Toronto Central CCAC version
This video was produced in January 2012 to support the introduction by the Toronto Central Community Care Access Centre of a best practice for Personal Support Workers to engage home care clients in their personal support services. It is intended to be used with a training package designed by the TC CCAC and delivered by different home care agencies in the Toronto Central area, but it can also be used to illustrate different home care clients’ views of how much they value the “small extras” that Personal Support Workers provide.
Keeping the ‘home’ in home care is a research project is funded by Saint Elizabeth Health Care’s (SEHC) Care to Know Centre and the Canadian Health Services Research Foundation. The goal of the project is to improve home care clients’ experience of personal support services.
Phase 1 of the project included video-recorded interviews with home care clients, family members and personal support workers (PSWs) in 2 SEHC Service Delivery Centre areas – North Simcoe Muskoka and Hamilton Niagara Haldimand Brant – to find out what clients and family members like about personal support and where they think there is room for improvement. A 20-minute video with with the Phase 1 findings is available here.
Parts 1 and 2 of Phase 2, involved validating the Phase 1 findings with PSWs and Supervisors, and identifying potential personal support program changes to maximize the positive experiences of home care clients and minimize their negative experiences.
The first video produced in this research project was a summary of preliminary findings. A version was presented at the annual conferences of the Canadian Association for Health Services and Policy Research in May 2010 in Toronto.
