The Role of Resident Support Personnel in Long-Term Care Homes

Are Resident Support Personnel going to replace PSWs in long-term care?

Resident Support Personnel

Resident Support Personnel, or RSPs, provide some personal support services to low-risk residents (for example, helping brush a resident's hair or teeth). RSPs have acted as a stopgap solution to help support largely understaffed healthcare teams in long-term care. The Ministry is currently seeking feedback to amend the Fixing Long-Term Care Act, 2021 to give RSPs a more formalized role.

The Ministry is working to stabilize the role of resident support personnel beyond July 1, 2025. To achieve this, they consulted the Regulatory Registry from September 29, 2023, to November 20, 2023. The consultation focused on whether these personnel should be allowed to permanently provide personal support services to low-risk residents or if their role should be limited after July 1, 2025.

The feedback from the consultation generally supported maintaining the role of resident support personnel in long-term care as a supplement to personal support workers. Key points from the feedback include:

• Resident support personnel provide timely care and help reduce the workload of personal support workers and nurses, allowing them to focus on specialized tasks.
• This role offers a pathway for individuals to enter and explore careers in the long-term care sector.
• Concerns were raised about whether resident support personnel have sufficient training to provide direct care without supervision.
• There is a call for the Ministry to provide additional guidance on the role of resident support personnel.

Resident Support Personnel Plan

The Ministry is planning to change a rule so that long-term care homes can keep using resident support personnel after July 1, 2025. Here's what they are proposing:

• Long-term care homes can hire people to work as resident support personnel, even if they don't have personal support worker education, as long as they have the right skills and the Director of Nursing agrees.
• The Director of Nursing will make sure that the right staff member is assigned to each resident, based on their care plan and needs.
• Resident support personnel can help low-risk residents with personal care, but they might be supervised by a nurse or personal support worker, depending on the resident's needs.
• Resident support personnel cannot provide personal care to high-risk residents.
• Care plans must always be based on what residents need and prefer, including their choice of caregiver (like a nurse or personal support worker).
• The ministry will give guidelines to homes on how to safely use resident support personnel, including what tasks they can and cannot do.
• The ministry also supports resident support personnel in becoming personal support workers through the Learn & Earn Accelerated Program, and they will look for more ways to help them advance their skills.

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What do you think?

What do you think of the plan to formalize the role of RSPs in long-term care? Is it a good idea to improve staffing levels, or a slippery slope that could leave us with even fewer healthcare professionals in long-term care homes?

Want your voice heard? Make sure you respond to the public call for comment that's open until June 15, 2024.