There are increasing concerns about a growing $2 billion wage gap in Ontario's community health care sector.
The recently launched #ForUsForYou Campaign highlights the pay discrepancy between mental health staff in organizations like St. Clair Child & Youth Services, and their peers doing similar work in places like hospitals and schools.
Executive Director Craig McKenzie said the staff in primary care, mental health and addictions organizations, home and community care, and long-term care, can't afford to stay in the sector.
He said this is causing unprecedented staffing shortages, impacting the care Ontarians rely on, adding the agency is struggling to retain workers.
"That's having an impact on our ability to provide the quality and timely services that kids and families in our community need and deserve," said McKenzie.
McKenzie said it's a pressing issue.
"Folks with the same level of education are experience are finding work elsewhere for often 15 to 20 per cent more," he said. "We currently have three vacancies in the agency that we are struggling to fill. Particularly, the challenge for us is in social work, psychotherapist positions as well as psychologists and psychological associates."
McKenzie said wait times for assessment, counselling and therapy continue to increase, and there's a need for action.
"For those children and youth who need access to psychological assessments, locally some have had to wait upwards of a year," said McKenzie. "For some of our specialized counselling and therapy services locally, we see waits of four to six months. If we had the staff to do better, then we would do better. The team we have has done a wonderful job to do the best they can with what they have. But, at this point we're calling for action."
McKenzie realizes there's no quick fix to the problem.
"Provincially, we're looking at a $500 million investment over the next five years to really close this wage gap," he said. "As well as addressing Bill 124. Many of our staff experienced, coming out of the pandemic, no wage increase. So, that's had an impact."
Bill 124 limits public sector workers' compensation increases to a maximum of one per cent a year for three years—including for unionized workers as their contracts expire.
The #ForUsForYou Campaign is a joint effort between ten provincial associations representing over 200,000 community workers.
They include:
- Addictions and Mental Health Ontario
- AdvantAge Ontario
- Alliance for Healthier Communities
- Association of Family Health Teams of Ontario
- Canadian Mental Health Association Ontario
- Children’s Mental Health Ontario
- Family Service Ontario
- Indigenous Primary Health Care Council
- Nurse Practitioner-Led Clinic Association
- Ontario Community Support Association