Health Ministry looking for help in care homes

Eleven months into the pandemic, the Saskatchewan Ministry of Health is looking for help in the province’s personal care homes.

The ministry has put out an Expression of Interest, trying to find someone to be able to provide groups of workers in the case of COVID-19 outbreaks in personal care homes.

“In order to support (personal care homes) in caring for residents in place, where medically suitable, and avoid unnecessary transfer of residents to other locations, the Ministry of Health is seeking to secure an emergency response staffing team,” read the online statement.

The interest is in teams of care aides with coordination and oversight that can be deployed anywhere in the province.

The province has been struggling with COVID-19 outbreaks in care homes since at least the fall, but Health Minister Paul Merriman said until now, workers from other parts of the health system have been brought in to help.

“We’ve been backfilling with SHA employees and pulling people. We’ve had reduction of services across the province to be able to backfill those positions and we’ve also had SHA employees that have either self-isolated or been diagnosed with COVID,” explained Merriman.

But now, the province is preparing to staff around 200 vaccination clinics with 2,200 staff members and so Merriman said the workers need to be freed up for the vaccination effort.

“This (vaccine roll out) is going to accelerate very quickly and we need to have everybody ready,” said Merriman.

Merriman called it a proactive measure to make sure the ministry is ready if there is another outbreak.