It’s been eight months since I wrote my inaugural “End of the Road” post highlighting the massive gap in the Ontario healthcare system for people with complex or high-needs physical disabilities. Little did I know that the gap I encountered back then was merely the tip of a much larger, much more sinister problem. It’s a problem that is ignored by both provincial and federal leaders. It’s a problem that gets little to no attention from the media. It’s a problem that we should all be ashamed of ourselves for letting it continue unabated: the wholesale warehousing of persons with disabilities in Long-Term Care (LTC) facilities across the nation.
Continue readingThe Best-Kept RDSP Secret
Don’t treat this as financial advice, but I think that Registered Disability Savings Plans (RDSPs) are a sham. When they were first introduced, the propaganda machine from both the government and financial sector was running hot with the promise of “free money” for disabled people thanks to government grants and bonds for those that met income criteria. Additionally, having an RDSP wouldn’t preclude you from receiving disability benefits (e.g. from the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP)), so what could you possibly stand to lose by opening and contributing to an RDSP?
Continue readingEnjoy Slowly
It’s hard to be a food nerd in an electric wheelchair. Travel is difficult and most of the interesting places worth visiting – farms, farmers’ markets, walking food tours, bakeries, and restaurants – are not wheelchair accessible. Some might be only partially accessible and often that’s enough to ruin the experience. The primary obstacles are poor parking and stairs, but many other factors also add up to make or break the experience for a visitor with a physical disability.
As a gourmand, restaurants are a passion of mine and I’m disheartened when wheelchair accessibility prevents me from participating. I love to try authentic ethnic cuisines and real, whole foods as a breath of fresh air to the bloat of industrial fast food found on every city block – pizza, hamburgers, fresh fries, and the occasional fast food imitation of Mexican or Indian dishes. For real, authentic food, it usually means small-scale, “mom-n-pops” restaurants, often in picturesque, downtown locales that have charming, old-world architecture that is not at all wheelchair accessible. To borrow an idea from Michael Pollan, I think of this genre as “restaurant pastoral”. I don’t blame the restaurateurs; I’d probably take the same approach if I were in their shoes. Given the fierce competition in the industry, it’s incredibly difficult for such small establishments to retrofit buildings that were never designed with accessibility in mind.
One of my favourite ethnic cuisines is sushi, but in my small corner of the world, sushi has been overrun by the all-you-can-eat buffet-style restaurants. It’s the fast food version of sushi that is at best a poor facsimile to the real thing. Industrial sushi might be better than nothing, but around the end of 2018, I decided that there had to be something better out there. I knew that a quality sushi restaurant would likely fall into the inaccessible “restaurant pastoral” archetype, but I was determined to not give up without a fight.
Continue readingDirect Funding Recruitment Survival Guide: Sustainable Continuous Hiring
With a stroke of the pen, you signed the contract and condemned yourself to Sisyphean labour. To be fair, you did it for a noble ideal rather than out of avarice or hubris, but the end result is the same. In exchange for your freedom and independence, you’re now forced to put in the time and effort required to be constantly hiring new attendants. In today’s pandemic economy, a full staff roster seems asymptotically out of reach and never-ending recruitment takes its toll physically and mentally.
The only way to make continuous hiring sustainable is to create a quick, repeatable process that intentionally minimizes your mental and physical effort. The keys to achieving this are strong preparation, automation, and data-driven improvement.
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The Only Reason You Need To Go Vote
The recent announcement of the 2022 Ontario election has given me cause for reflection. As somebody that has generally made a conscious effort to vote, whether in municipal, provincial, or federal elections, it is disappointing to see the growing gap between those that vote and those that do not. The typical reasons I hear for not voting include “it won’t change anything”, “I don’t know who to vote for”, or “I don’t have time”. At the other end of the spectrum are those people that value participating in the democratic process (warts and all!)l, and thus see voting as their civic duty. While this is a noble notion, self-interest is an even stronger motivator. In challenging situations, values like civic duty can crumble quickly, whereas the drive for self-preservation is likely the last thing to be lost. What better way to ensure your self-preservation than ensuring that you can preserve your health for as long as possible?
Growing up in a society that boasts of universal healthcare, we’re conditioned to believe that when we’re sick, we go to a doctor and they bring the full power of science and medicine to bear to make us better. This line of thinking makes us feel warm and fuzzy on the inside, but it hides a stark reality by omitting a key point: doctors apply science and medicine, but only within the bounds imposed by a given political context.
Delivering healthcare is a political act much more than an act of science or medicine; if you value your health, that’s the only reason you need to go vote.
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Direct Funding Recruitment Survival Guide: Interviewing
Welcome to the third installment of the Direct Funding Recruitment Survival Guide! Using the tips from the first two installments, Crafting your Job Ad and Advertising your Job Openings, you’ve now made it to the interview stage. If you do not have past experience in hiring, interviewing can be very stressful, especially if you happen to be an introvert or you do not consider yourself a natural “people person”. Interviewing is an important, and unavoidable, part in the recruitment process and as with most things, it gets easier the more you do it. It’s easy to think that the interview is there solely to benefit the employer, but in reality, the interview is a two-way street – while you are assessing the candidate, the candidate is also assessing you for suitability as an employer. A poorly planned interview may turn off candidates, whereas a well-thought out, well-executed interview can give you just enough of a competitive edge to make a successful hire.
During the interview process, your primary goal is simple: while conveying an appropriate level of professionalism, ask the right questions to obtain the information that you need to make an informed hiring decision.
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To the Medical Profession: Your Threatening Posters are Part of the Problem
There’s something that I’ve noticed happening even pre-pandemic that’s been bothering me. It’s something that is most prevalent in medical clinics and hospitals, but is also visible in home care and probably other healthcare service providers too: the threatening poster. I don’t mean the usual posters which try to promote healthy living nor even the posters which try to scare you away from an unhealthy lifestyle (e.g. the anti-smoking posters with gross pictures). What I mean is the new breed of posters, displayed in prime viewing locations, which threaten police action if a staff member deems a patient to be unruly or acting without an “appropriate” level of respect. While I appreciate that healthcare is a challenging, stressful field, these posters are offensive and go a step too far.
If you, as a medical professional, feel that aggressive patient behaviour is serious enough to warrant pre-emptively threatening your entire client base with the police, then perhaps it is time for some self-reflection about how you are contributing to the problem.
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Direct Funding Recruitment Survival Guide: Advertising your Job Openings
Welcome to the second installment of the Direct Funding Recruitment Survival Guide! Using the tips from the first installment, Crafting your Job Ad, you now have compelling job ads, but where do you advertise them and how do you do it effectively? As a self-manager, CILT or your local ILC has likely pointed you to their “Finding Staff” and “Tips for Advertising” pages and left you with their rudimentary “Advertising Package 2015” document listing a handful of potential places to advertise. This material is dated and leaves a lot to be desired, so I was pleased to hear that toward the end of 2021, CILT organized Zoom meetings with self-managers to share practical and timely recruitment ideas (sadly, I didn’t receive the memo to participate!). By organizing these meetings, CILT was finally acknowledging the hiring crisis facing self-managers, but despite whatever good intentions there might have been, the initiative ultimately ended up as a squandered opportunity. Why? The only tangible result from these sessions was another document, “Hiring Resources”, listing a few potentially-relevant places to advertise and a much larger list of not-applicable places. As far as I can tell, this information hasn’t even been integrated into the Direct Funding website and only exists as a footnote link in the news/memo section, where it is unlikely to be seen. Similar to the original “Advertising Package 2015” the new document is reflective of the minimum-effort, one-size-fits-all approach typical of bureaucratic institutions and is, unfortunately, not very helpful.
To advertise effectively, you need to put together your own advertising package which reflects your preferences and consists not only of the easy, obvious options from CILT, but also potentially competitive local options.
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Direct Funding Recruitment Survival Guide: Crafting your Job Ad
Welcome to the first installment of the Direct Funding (DF) Recruitment Survival Guide! In this post, I’m going to focus on a fundamental piece of the hiring puzzle: the job ad. Your job ad is your only chance to stand out amid a sea of competitors and make a good first impression. Your ad also strongly influences both the type and quantity of candidates that will apply for your job. The sea of competitors largely consists of big healthcare corporations, who for all their clout still stick to formal, stuffy job ads. Other than differences in pay and hours, once you’ve seen one such ad, you’ve pretty much seen them all. This is fantastic news for you as a DF self-manager because it gives you a chance to stand out from the crowd thanks to a creative, memorable, eye-catching ad!
The most effective Direct Funding job ads are semi-formal, medium-length ads that creatively convey the job details in a way that speaks to the intrinsic motivations of the ideal candidate.
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Announcing a New Series: Direct Funding Recruitment Survival Guide
I’m excited to announce an upcoming series of blog posts intended to share some of my knowledge when it comes to hiring on the Direct Funding (DF) program. While I am writing from the perspective of a DF self-manager, much of the advice is still applicable even if you are hiring privately. I’m not claiming to have a silver bullet solution (I’m struggling with hiring too!), but I have learned many things along the way that should be part of the DF onboarding package, but aren’t.
In this series, I will share all of the things that I wish I knew when starting my recruitment journey, but had to instead fumble through and learn via mistakes.
Hiring is difficult and despite what you may hear from CILT or your local ILC, the COVID-19 pandemic has made things significantly more difficult. Remember how prior to the pandemic there was a province-wide shortage of personal support workers? That shortage didn’t magically get fixed when the pandemic hit, so just imagine how much worse the situation is now with the additional pandemic-induced shortages throughout the healthcare sector! If this is your first time recruiting and you have no previous human resources (HR) experience, it can be quite overwhelming. It may seem like there are a million things to do without knowing how, leading to anxiety and procrastination that only makes the situation worse. If you are struggling with hiring, is it because “you are doing it wrong”, because of the pandemic and other external factors, or a mix of both?
Yes, CILT does provide some documentation around recruiting, but it is very high-level and quite dated, leaving the new self-manager largely on their own. Having to figure things out by yourself, you’ll likely run into a number of surprises about the realities of recruitment. For example, I was surprised to discover the following:
- It is common for candidates to agree to an interview and then not show up. It’s even common for candidates to miss an interview and then several days later contact you to reschedule as if nothing ever happened.
- There is a lot of spam from individuals seeking Canadian work visas. This comes not only from individuals, but also from (potentially shady) businesses claiming they’ll find you amazing foreign workers for a fee. Both the individuals and businesses are completely ignorant of what the job entails and that it is small-scale, part-time work.
- It is common for candidates to treat mandatory conditions of employment as optional, even if these are clearly stated in your job ad.
- It is common for candidates to find other jobs while going through your recruitment process. The longer your hiring process is, the more likely it is that a candidate will find a better job and leave you to continue your search.
A DF self-manager once told me that his hiring tends to follow the “rule of halves”. That is, you will reject 50% of applicants based on their resume; of those remaining, 50% will show up to an interview; of those remaining, 50% will accept your job offer, and finally, of those remaining, 50% will actually stay with you as a longer-term employee. When I first heard this, I was discouraged and hoped that it was not accurate because it paints such a bleak hiring picture. Sadly, after more than a year of recruiting, this turns out to be a good rule of thumb, making it all the more important for self-managers to be as effective as possible in recruiting.
Here is what you can expect to read about in this upcoming series of posts:
- Crafting your Job Ad. Your ad is your only chance at a good first impression. What makes an effective job ad? Is your ad working well to attract the kinds of candidates that you want?
- Advertising your Job Openings. There are many choices for where to advertise your job. Do you know all of your options? Are you making the best use of each option?
- Interviewing. Interviewing candidates is hugely important, but it can be stressful and difficult to do if you are not a “people person”. Are you using interview time effectively to suss out potential red flags about the candidate? How do you know if you are asking the right questions? Does your interview process convey the appropriate level of professionalism?
- Sustainable Continuous Hiring. Like it or not, you will be hiring continuously. To make it less overwhelming, research, prepare, and automate your way to an easily-repeatable process.
Your mileage may vary, but I hope that this series will be helpful to lessen the stress and learning curve around recruiting attendants.
Cleverly Disabled 