Home Care Ontario Honours 40 Home Care Heroes

Awards recognize the faces providing outstanding home care to Ontarians.

HAMILTON, ON, March 20, 2024 /CNW/ - Home care workers go above and beyond to deliver outstanding care in every part of Ontario. They are there for us when we need them most. To honour them, Home Care Ontario has awarded 40 nurses, Personal Support Workers (PSWs), therapists, and other home care professionals with 'Home Care Hero' awards to recognize their exceptional dedication to our seniors and all patients across Ontario.

"These frontline home care professionals embody what it means to care for your patients. They offer compassionate, valuable, life-saving care to almost a million Ontarians every day, and are incredibly deserving of this recognition," said Sue VanderBent, CEO of Home Care Ontario. "We want to put a face to these home care heroes and highlight the amazing job they do for their patients."

The awards were awarded out to 40 home care staff who are the unsung heroes of our health care system. Recipients were among the tens of thousands of home care workers who provide compassionate care to patients across the province.

All award recipients were nominated by someone who witnessed their acts of everyday heroism, including their patients and family members of their patients, coworkers, siblings, children, employers, and more.

Recipients included Angelena Tackaberry, a nurse from Welland whose daughter nominated her as a Home Care Hero and was inspired to follow in her mother's footsteps and become a PSW.

Physiotherapy Assistant Rubina Damji was awarded as a Home Care Hero for instilling confidence in her patients and making them feel comfortable, including by counting exercises repetitions in their native languages of Urdu, Hindi, Mandarin, Cantonese, and Italian.

One of the winners, Occupational Therapist Shannon Burwash, received nominations from several of her patients and their families, including one who said, "Shannon was truly interested in my husband's wellbeing. It was an extremely amazing experience."

The Home Care Hero awards are part of Home Care Ontario's "More Home Care" campaign, which calls on the Ontario government to increase funding for frontline compensation as well as ongoing specialized training and mentorship to support home care staff.

Home Care Ontario is asking government to invest $411 million a year for three years to help better support our frontline staff and ensure the home care system will be there when patients need it most.

"We have a rapidly aging population," says Sue VanderBent. "We need to massively expand our home care workforce to support these heroes and all the remarkable professionals to deliver more care where patients want it today and tomorrow- at home."

Home Care Ontario is a member-based organization representing the full spectrum of home care providers in the province, including publicly-funded, not-for-profit and family-funded organizations. Our members are united by a singular mission to provide outstanding nursing care, home support services, personal care, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, respiratory therapy, infusion pharmacy, social work, dietetics, speech language therapy and medical equipment and supplies to people in the comfort of their homes.

SOURCE Home Care Ontario