The challenges facing long-term care in Ontario are deep and complicated, and including a lack of qualified workers to fill front-line jobs.
The provincial government has promised 30,000 new long-term care beds over the next decade and health care advocates say more money will be needed to hire staff to care for residents of those beds.
Meanwhile, managers of Lambton County’s three long-term care homes say they struggle to find enough workers for the beds they’ve got.
County officials say hiring and retaining nurses, personal support workers (PSWs), and even cooks, has become a growing problem in the last two or three years.