Sault College has 90 spots for new tuition-free PSW program

Sault College will be able to take up to 90 new personal support worker (PSW) students once Ontario’s new tuition-free accelerated training program gets underway in April. 

On Wednesday the Ontario government announced its $115-million plan to mobilize up to 8,200 new PSWs province-wide in order to work in health and long-term care sectors. 

Up to 6,000 students will receive tuition-free, accelerated training over a six-month period, as opposed to the eight months needed to graduate from a typical PSW program. Another 2,200 current PSW students will be eligible to receive a $2,000 tuition grant, along with a stipend for clinical placements. 

The accelerated PSW training program launches at Sault College April 5.  

“It’s come along quite quickly,” said Marilyn King, dean of health, community services, interdisciplinary studies, media and design at Sault College. “We’re quite thrilled about it - we’re thrilled that we’ll be able to help increase our number of PSW graduates in order to care for all the elderly people, either in long-term care or their personal homes. It’s wonderful.”

The program - described by Sault College as a hybrid model that combines online learning with laboratory classes at the college and in care settings - allows students to satisfy program requirements faster with an increased number of study hours per week.

Students in the accelerated program will be available for paid work placements after three months. Sault College has five or six long-term care facilities and possibly, the hospital, where students could potentially carry out their three months of on-site training.

“Our long-term care facilities, they are desperate for staff. Desperate. We’ve already checked with them and said, ‘if we had to run this, would you support us in terms of placements?’ and they’ve all been supportive,” King said. 

The college could also hire more part-time staff to help administer the new program. 

“We’d probably be looking at hiring some part-time people. We already have some, but I could see us still needing more part-time people, because there’s the in-class teaching as well as we need clinical teachers that follow the students in placement and supervise them there,” King said. 

Sault College will accept new PSW students into the accelerated program through intakes over the months of April, May and June. The program will begin accepting applications through the Ontario College Application Service in early March. 

King says that the college is ready to take on the new PSW program, despite not having much time to prepare for the influx of students. 

“We’re ready. We currently have the lab space – that’s certainly not a problem – and with it being in the April-May-June time period, we won’t have the other programs that usually require lab space, like practical nursing, or BScN (Collaborative Bachelor of Science in Nursing). They’re going to be finished for the summer, so we’re going to have that space to kind of spread out and prepare these students,” she said. 

All 24 publicly-funded colleges in Ontario will take part in the accelerated training program for personal support workers.