Hold-on, the public sector and private agencies are there, aren't they ?
In many Canadian provinces, the public sector has made efforts to provide a certain level of in-home services. However, the organization of this care is weak. Conditions are ever changing, and the sector provides very little in the way of making sure caregivers have a valid working environment and offers no real way for those serving in it to build a clientele over time. You might be able to get hours but having the right schedule and location is a constant challenge and choosing the type of patient you want to care for is almost impossible.
In the case of traditional private agencies, quality care is almost never the key focus. Changing personnel, hours and locations that are unmanageable for workers, low pay (including often unfulfilled promises by agencies), make the experience disappointing and a low quality environment for the caregiver, for the patient and for his/her family. Add to this the shortage of qualified workers across all of North America and you have a recipe for many years of difficult conditions and low-quality service to the patient. Bottom line, the service has become a “put-a-body-in-a-home” at the highest possible margin (for the agency) approach instead of a win-win for patients and caregivers with better working conditions.
Key to this is the fact that agencies are expensive to run. They need to rent or purchase a space for their office as well as back-office staff to manage scheduling, payroll, clients, marketing and sales, accounting, etc. This quickly becomes expensive, especially in larger metropolitan areas.
Care professionals of all types, be they personal support workers, LPN, PAB, or any other category of home support workers enter the field with the legitimate intent of providing good care, making a difference and with a desire to constantly improve their knowledge and skills but end up being disillusioned.
