Human service sector launches desperate campaign on extreme staff shortage
Low wages and benefits are causing a serious staffing shortage in Alberta’s human service sector says a group of provincial agencies. On August 29, the agencies launched whocaresalberta.com, a campaign to increase the pay for social agency workers. “We have two key objectives,” said Anton Smith of the Alberta Association of Services for Children and Families, “increase salaries and benefits to people providing services and a three year social infrastructure plan for the province.”
The representatives spoke at a news conference in Edmonton organized to launch the campaign. They are distributing postcards on the issue and ask concerned Albertans to visit the campaign website whocaresalberta.com to get involved.
Smith and other representatives from the sector said the low wages – sometimes half what unionized health region or government employees make– are making it impossible for the agencies to provide the care for the people they are entrusted with.
Jan Reimer of the Alberta Council of Women’s Shelters said 27,000 women and children were turned away from help last year because the shelters were at capacity. Bob Greig of the Council of Disability Services said many people employed in the sector earn less than $30,000 a year and they have an annual staff turnover rate of 40%.
Almost none of the employees in the “voluntary” human sector are unionized.
“It’s only a matter of time until someone is seriously hurt or dies,” Greig said. Unlike other industries, the service sector can’t hang out a sign saying “closed today for lack of staff. The fact is care needs to be provided.”
“Social workers are dedicated to their clients – some take two jobs to supplement inadequate wages,” Jake Kuiken, President of the Alberta College of Social Workers said. “It’s time for the Alberta government to resolve decades of off-loading,” he said.
Jan Reimer said that with the huge influx of people into the province, demand on the service sector has grown tremendously, but government funding has remained static with 2 or 3% annual increases. “For the last 15 years we have done more with less,” she said, and it’s come to the point where the director of one women’s shelter had go out and cut the lawn, because they had no one else to do it.
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