Personal support workers (PSW) are a critical workforce in the home and community care sector. While many find this to be a very rewarding role, they face many workplace factors that impact their health and wellbeing. On top of the physical demands of the job, these workers are exposed to hazardous psychosocial job conditions such as working alone, encountering discrimination or experiencing violence and harassment.
A new study is now exploring the needs of these workers from an added perspective—that of an aging workforce. “As the overall Canadian population ages, aging in place has become an important policy focus in Canada’s health-care system, but that strategy depends on a healthy and engaged PSW workforce,” says Dr. Madison Brydges, who’ll lead the research as the new recipient of the Institute for Work & Health (IWH)’s Cam Mustard Early Career Accelerator Award.
“The long-term retention of PSWs is important for the quality of care and overall capacity of the sector, which is why efforts to support the health and wellbeing of these workers are vital. Yet this important, women-dominated workforce is often overlooked,” adds Brydges, homecare scientist at VHA Home HealthCare.
This two-phase project is co-led with PSWs involved throughout. In the first phase, Brydges will conduct interviews with personal support workers to understand the job-related factors that impact their health and wellbeing as they age at work in the home and community care sector, including the impact of intersecting identities on their experiences of aging. In the second part, Brydges will take what was learned and co-design practical solutions that can be adopted at the individual, organizational and sector level.
Brydges adds that she’s excited to conduct study with the support of IWH’s award, which aims to support and accelerate the research program of an early career researcher in work and health. Although studies have been conducted on worker retention and on worker health and wellbeing in this sector, says Brydges, rarely is this research conducted with the lens of aging at work.
“With this study, I hope to bring these two areas of research together using a co-designed approach that centres the voices of PSWs and grounds the findings in their lived experience,” she adds.