“I work as a housekeeper at a long term care facility. My day is spent cleaning the residents’ rooms, their wheelchairs, beds, and bathrooms, as well as removing any garbage and making sure they have the stock they need.
As a housekeeper, we are not expected to have a lot of contact with the residents, but it’s difficult not to. We have been working so hard to make sure they can still see their families, but not having that physical connection has been hard on them. They don’t understand, so we have to explain it to them every day. Morale gets low when they have no contact. It’s emotionally hard to watch.
It has been an extremely difficult year. They just miss their families. It’s really sad and makes me very emotional. For some residents, we are all they have.
Things are getting better now. For the first time in a year, some of my residents have been able to hug their children. It made me want to cry to see the joy on one resident’s face when she told me ‘my daughter got to hug me’. For a year, I saw how upsetting it was to her, not being able to hug her daughter, and now finally, she was able to. It is such a huge thing.
It has been difficult working as a contracted worker during this pandemic and not being able to work as a team with your care staff. We need contract support services to be back in house so we can provide better service for the residents, as they are the ones who are suffering the most.”
Sarah, Housekeeper, part of the health care team