Improving Care for Seniors in Long-Term Care Homes

New historic long-term care staffing plan will make long-term care a better place for residents to live, and a better place for staff to work

It is clear, now more than ever, that immediate and deliberate action is needed to improve Ontario’s long-term care sector so that we can protect, provide appropriate care, and bring dignity to our most vulnerable today and into the future.

To that end, today our PC government launched one of the largest recruitment and training drives in the history of our province to deliver on our commitment to improve care for seniors in long-term care homes. A Better Place to Live; A Better Place to Work: Ontario’s Long-Term Care Staffing Plan sets out actions to hire more staff, improve working conditions for existing staff, drive effective and accountable leadership, and implement retention strategies.

Building on the 2020 Ontario budget commitment to increase hours of daily direct care to four hours per day for each long-term care resident, the new staffing plan focuses on six key areas of action to be delivered over four years:

• Investing up to $1.9 billion annually by 2024-25 to create more than 27,000 new positions for personal support workers, registered nurses and registered practical nurses in long-term care to meet the direct care commitment; in addition, providing a 20 per cent increase in direct care time administered by other health care professionals such as physiotherapists and social workers.
• Accelerating and expanding education and training pathways in order to prepare and train the tens of thousands of new staff that will be required.
• Supporting continued professional development and growth of long-term care staff to improve retention.
• Improving working conditions for staff by coordinating with long-term care employers to increase full-time employment and promote innovative approaches to work and technology.
• Driving effective and accountable leadership in homes across the province to improve oversight, guidance and medical outcomes in long-term care homes.
• Measuring progress against key performance indicators.

This ambitious plan will make Ontario the leader in Canada in the provision of care in long-term care homes. Our PC government will continue to work hard to solve the long-standing and systemic challenges facing the long-term care sector, so that our loved ones have the quality of life they deserve.