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The St. Albert PSW program in Sudbury strives to have a safe and inclusive learning environment with a focus on differentiated instruction and effective assessment techniques. The students from the 11-year-old program are highly regarded as competent and compassionate PSWs by community agencies.

Dawn-Marie Brunet, became a clinical instructor for St. Albert’s second cohort. Ten years and over 300 students later, she coordinates the program. In her current role, she teaches both in-class and placement components, and oversees the coordination of intake, enrolment and placements.

Students benefit from the many close contacts within the community that Dawn Marie has cultivated over the past decade. The students of the program are always welcome to do placements in Long Term Care facilities and a variety of Community Agencies. Students have also completed placements in our own elementary and secondary schools in the Sudbury Catholic District School Board.

Overall, the program is six months in length—three for in-class instruction and three for placements. The classroom is equipped with the necessary tools, including beds, lifts, mannequins, etc. allowing students to practice their skills on a regular basis. Students attend two facility placements and one community placement. It is the philosophy of the St. Albert PSW program that this continuity of care is essential in job preparation.

Each intake class participates in a job fair at the school. This provides employers with the opportunity to recruit new hires. It always includes a bit of a friendly competition to see which company brings the best swag, to try to sway the students. It is not uncommon for students to be offered employment during the job fair, which is before they even complete the program. PSWs from St. Albert are highly skilled and recognized!

On behalf of our membership, Board of Directors and office staff, CESBA is shaken and saddened by the discovery of the deplorable loss of life of the 215 children in the Kamloops residential school. We express our heartfelt condolences to Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation and Indigenous communities across Canada.

This is further evidence of the genocide of Indigenous Peoples across Canada. Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their homes, families and communities to attend state and church-led schools that aimed to strip them of their culture, language and identity, and that subjected them to unspeakable cruelty and abuse. This has caused a legacy of intergenerational trauma that continues to be felt by Indigenous families and communities today. This is known to Indigenous communities whose leaders have continually spoken out, often to disbelieving and unresponsive institutions and governments.

This tragedy reminds us as educators that we must reckon with our sector’s history of institutional racism towards Indigenous Peoples, as well as the current inequity within our educational systems. We acknowledge the role schools have played in devaluing and silencing Indigenous Ways of Knowing. As an organization that supports adult and continuing education in Ontario school boards, CESBA has a unique opportunity to engage with adult Indigenous learners who were marginalized within our schools in the past. It is our responsibility to offer an educational environment that welcomes, affirms and supports all Indigenous learners, staff and community members. Our learning organizations must be places of hope. It is our responsibility to educate ourselves. To do this, we must continue to listen to and learn from Indigenous communities and leaders.

To advance the process of reconciliation, our sector must commit to the Calls to Action for Education (6-12) outlined by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. CESBA has recently formed a Committee to Support Indigenous Adult Learners, with both Indigenous and settler members. Its objective is to offer school board administrators and staff the support, learning opportunities and resource development to better serve Indigenous learners and staff.

We take this collective moment of grief as a call to action. We commit to calling out systemic racism and inequity towards Indigenous Peoples in our institutions and communities. We will explore ways to expand our listening, learn the truth and strive towards reconciliation.

Here are some links for our members and stakeholders to learn more:

Truth and Reconciliation Commission: Calls to Action

Truth and Reconciliation Commission: Calls to Action for Education

National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation

National Student Memorial Map

First Nations Control of First Nations Education Act

CBC Podcast: Telling our Twisted Histories

For survivors—Residential School Survivor Crisis Line: 1-866-925-4419

We are pleased to introduce the rich and fascinating themes that we explore in our virtual conference on Nov. 24 and 25.

Along with our main theme of Bridges to Innovation, featured in our new event logo above, we will be seeking varied, relevant workshops on the following sub-themes:

• Post pandemic trends and opportunities
• Best and next practices in virtual learning
• Support for vulnerability
• Leadership for our new reality

Watch for details soon on our exciting keynote speaker!

We are counting on the knowledgeable and talented A&CE administrators and staff in our membership to present most of the workshops. Please give some thought to pitching yourself or a colleague to present. Stay tuned for information on how to apply.

For more information on the conference, email Suzanne at sschwenger@cesba.com

Executive Director Bernadette Beaupre has led CESBA with bold vision through extraordinary growth over the past eight years. Today, we celebrate her work and wish her well as she leaves us for new adventures.

When Bernadette joined CESBA in 2013, the organization relied on a procession of private consultants, with no staff or office. She worked closely with the board to move it to a policy governance framework, which required a massive overhaul of business processes to ensure transparency, accountability and ethical practices.

In her first three years, Bernadette wrote policies and built infrastructure that ensured our sustainability. She moved to an office at Centre for Social Innovation, which allowed her close access to Queen’s Park for meetings with government ministries. She produced annual reports for members and moved CESBA online—no more faxes!

Drawing inspiration from the West Region, Bernadette launched our regional meetings for the North, Central and East Regions. These have become vital touchpoints for our members to network and exchange strategies and resources. She started numerous committees across the sector and ensured they all felt supported. She reached out to our Francophone members to form a committee and committed to always having a Francophone board member.

Bernadette has forged relationships with key government representatives from all relevant ministries. Her government relations work has ensured our organization and programs receive critical funding. She advocated fiercely on behalf of our organization when the government changed, which allowed our survival. CESBA cemented its leadership with the Adult Education Strategy (AES), supporting nine regional AES roundtables. Many important tools and resources came from the AES.

In 2016, Bernadette negotiated with the Ministry of Education to fund the hiring of staff at CESBA rather than project consultants. With the help of the new team, she added a secure website that provided a resource hub for members, social media platforms and our monthly newsletter.

The team also grew the annual conference, supported committee work and launched numerous research and resource development projects. Today, we are an enthusiastic team of six staff members who are committed to supporting adult and continuing education.

The PSW program is of special importance to Bernadette. Since her mother relied on PSW care for the last decade of her life, she deeply valued the chance to promote the excellence and accessibility of school board PSW programs. Her support of the PSW committee has been instrumental in growing PSW programs across the province. After she recently spent hours advocating on behalf of school boards with ministry stakeholders to receive the same student support that public college programs were awarded, we learned this week that the Province extended the funding. It is hard to imagine a more fitting send-off than this news.

Bernadette is above all a connector, and this gift has made CESBA what it is today. She has forged relationships with A&CE stakeholders across the province with tenacity, humour and generosity of spirit. Through her leadership with our member administrators, other community groups, government policy makers, board and staff, CESBA has become a powerful voice for adult and continuing education in Ontario.

Bernadette would like to extend her thanks to the board and committees for their ongoing support and dedication to improving the lives of our students, our communities and our province.

Bernadette – On behalf of our board, staff and membership, we thank you for all you have done for us and we will miss you!

With her background as a mental health nurse and a teacher, Sandra Briar created an opportunity to capture the interest of students in health care at an early stage. She launched a unique program at Montcalm Secondary School (MSS) in London, ON that allows students to obtain their PSW certification while working on their OSSD.

“It’s a wonderful opportunity to support students who may not have considered PSW at the high school level to obtain gainful employment along with their OSSD,” Sandra shares. “We even have students coming from other schools with interest in our program.”

This fall, Sandra expects to have about 15 students enrolled for training. By reaching out to young students in Grades 10, 11 or 12, she provides them with a pathway to obtain credits that are aligned with the PSW training, as well as other relevant training such as CPR/FA, GPA and P.I.E.C.E.S. She also advises those interested in other health care careers on the credits they need for post-secondary training.

The MSS program has partnered with London Health Science Centre for placements once students turn 18 and can obtain a Vulnerable Sector Check.

Congratulations Sandra on putting together this innovative program! Please check out this CBC News article link about the program.

If you would like to reach out to Sandra, please email her at sbriars@tvdsb.ca

We are thrilled to update you on the Ontario Government’s commitment to extend funding to PSW students at school boards and private colleges. We will be sending detailed memos to Directors of Education in the next week.
Read the government media release here for more details.

We opposed their original commitment to only support students at public colleges without extending the same opportunities to Ontario school board students. Executive Director Bernadette Beaupre and PSW Lead Anita Plunkett met with several ministry staff on this issue, to voice their concerns and we are pleased that have responded positively.

We are also grateful that our members answered our call to reach out to ministries and MPs about this issue. Students and programs in more than 20 school boards will benefit, as will the quality of care for people living in longterm care will increase across the province.

The CESBA Board of Directors is pleased to announce that Paul Cox has been selected to assume the role of CESBA Executive Director effective May 1, 2021. Paul brings more than 15 years of experience as an Adult and Continuing Education Principal with the Waterloo Catholic District School Board. Paul led a large Adult and Continuing Education program which included programs, such as Adult Credit, Adult Non-Credit ESL, Personal Support Worker and Adult Literacy and Basic Skills. Paul’s leadership and experience he brings from his time in Kitchener-Waterloo and Cambridge will be a great asset to CESBA. The Board looks forward to working with Paul on behalf of all the members of CESBA.

With our decades’ long investment in PSW programs, Ontario’s school boards applaud the provincial government’s new free tuition and paid placements for PSWs. But we are shocked and dismayed to discover the bias against Adult and Continuing Education programs, which are not covered under this policy.

We learned last week that PSW students enrolled at our 23 school boards switched from our programs to community colleges for the free tuition and paid placements. Our enrolment is now down. By excluding school board programs, the new government policy will lead to a decrease in PSW enrolment throughout the province rather than the intended increase.

Ontario’s Adult and Continuing Education programs have certified 30,000 Personal Support Workers in the last decade and a half. We graduate 2,000 PSW students annually.  With an 85% graduation rate, the programs’ learning outcomes exceed the 50% graduation rate of colleges. And with the same certification, school board programs have a materials fee only—far less than college tuitions. For years we have delivered an accelerated PSW program. Our curriculum provides more than the required 600 hours in six months or less. And school boards have historic success with PSW programs, with 95% of our grads getting jobs during placements.

Unlike post-secondary programs, we accept a broader range of people, including mature students who do not have a high school diploma, newcomers and refugees (who often have difficulty with onerous college forms) and people with low incomes. They embrace a new career through Adult and Continuing Education where they are also able to graduate with both the Ontario Secondary School Diploma and their PSW certificate. Our high success rates are due to the front and back end wraparound services we provide, including literacy, numeracy, ESL and employment services. The students graduate with all Ministry of Education, Ministry of Colleges and Universities, and Ministry of Long-Term Care Requirements.

By excluding Ontario’s Adult and Continuing Education PSW programs from the free tuition funding and paid placements, school boards and Ontario’s health care system will be diminished at the worst time possible.

We would like to meet with the Minister of Health to discuss the inclusion of Ontario’s school boards in the government’s funding initiative in order to help it meet its goal of graduating and retaining the largest possible number of capable and qualified PSWs.