Workers study to make home visits more effective
Derek Neary
Northern News Services
Fort Simpson (Feb 02/01) - Home-care workers spend a great deal of time visiting elders and others in need of home visits.
Over the past nine days, 11 participants from across the Deh Cho have learned how to make those home visits more effective. They were in the classroom for 60 hours to study "body systems and personal care."
These are two of 12 modules in the certified home-care support program that started in January and is expected to be complete by June.
As a result of this most recent rigorous bout with the books (and help from a qualified instructor), Norma Jumbo, of Trout Lake, said she now knows much more about the human body and how it functions.
"I couldn't believe how (many) bones, muscles and veins we have in our bodies," she said, smiling.
Jumbo is actually a home-services worker who hopes to become a home-care aide. She has spent the past four years offering primarily cleaning services to those in need in her home community. Now she'd like to expand upon that and she has the support of community members in Trout Lake, she said.
"They encouraged me to attend (the program). They said while I'm still young it's good to learn to work with the elders," she said. "Now this is a new beginning for me."
Marie Lacorne, of Fort Providence, said there are many rewards of working with the elders.
"Especially when they tell us stories of when they were young," she said.
Lacorne, Albertine Nadli and Noella McLeod, are all home-care aides in Fort Providence who work on a rotational basis, providing services to 18 clients, each on a "care plan." Most visits consist of checking on medications, washing clothes and shopping for clients, according to Lacorne.
"I'm on the move," she said of her busy schedule.
With the knowledge she has acquired over the past nine days, she will now have a better idea of how to better explain naturally occurring changes in the aging human body. She will also be more alert to signs of illness in clients, things that local nurses should be made aware of.
Leah Keats, home-care co-ordinator for the Deh Cho said home-support workers play a key role in health care.
"Their the eyes and ears, in a lot of cases, of the health system because they're the ones who are there everyday," she said. "So they'll notice changes sometimes before anybody else does."
