St. Clair College says free PSW training program seeing huge interest

The provincial governmentwants morepersonal support workers trained and working as soon as possible amid the COVID-19 pandemic and local residents have answered the call.

St. Clair College started taking applications for a new, free PSWtraining program on Monday, and saw a lot of interest,according to Linda Watson, chair of nursing at St. Clair College.

"It went very well. We had a lot of interest in the program on Monday," she said in an interview with CBC Radio's Windsor Morning on Wednesday.

By 3 p.m., the college had to close applications because it had received submissionsfrom more than300 people. There were 150 spots available for an intake inApril and 100 spots for June.

Watson said she wasn't surprised by the high level of interest, saying the no-cost training option "opens a lot of doors" for those who might have been interested in entering the field or health-care in general.

Six-month program

The accelerated program compresses an eight-month training program into six, though the curriculum will basically be the same, Watson said.

"We are going to be front-loading our theory andour labcourses in the first 12 weeks, and then all of our clinical will be in the last half of the program," she said.

The program is beingoffered at the college's Chatham and Windsor campuses.

Accelerated training programs will be offered at all of 24 of Ontario's public colleges. The provincial government announced late last month it will spend $115 million to offer free tuition to PSW students,with the goal to get 8,200 new personal support workers employedin the field as quickly as possible.

There's a $2,000-tuition grant available forthose who have already started their learning.

High demand for PSWs

The province is calling it one of the biggest recruitment drives for PSWsin Ontario's history, launched due to the urgent need for more help within long-term care and retirement homes amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Premier Doug Ford said in a media release theeffortswillimprove quality life for seniors living in care homesand "begin to correct the decades of neglect in this sector."

Locally, hundreds of staff and residents at seniors' homes have been infected with COVID-19 during dozens of outbreaks in the last year. At one point, during the peak of the second wave, nearly half the local long-term care and retirement homes were in outbreak.

Since the pandemic began, 237 people have died amidoutbreaks at long-term care and retirement homes in Windsor-Essex.Nearly all were residents though several staff members have also lost their lives to COVID-19.