Personal Support Worker (PSW) Outreach Employment & Programs Explained
Perhaps you’ve applied for a personal support worker position and the employer tells you that your responsibilities and duties will also include performing community outreach services. You may ask yourself what exactly is outreach service?
Outreach, or as it is sometimes called community outreach, is a form of support work that takes place within a clients home. A number of individual’s that require the care that a personal support worker can give them still live at home, and aren’t in need of around the clock help. This is why outreach programs have been created.
As an outreach worker you will be assigned a schedule that will outline the various times and dates that you are to visit a clients home. Usually these visits are in blocks on one-to-three hours.
After getting to know the client your tasks will become almost routine. You may need to help clients with the usual range of personal support worker activities, which we won’t delve into here, but you will also be responsible for some if not many of the household chores such as cooking, laundry, mopping floors, cleaning bathrooms, etc.
Another variation of community outreach is respite care. Respite care workers take over for another care giver. This can help to create a style of teamwork between the workers and also helps to break up a portion of the care responsibilities.
Ultimately whether outreach is for you comes down to a personal preference. Some may see the one on one nature of outreach care as a positive, as it can create a more intimate relationship with a client. Others may see this as a negative and prefer to work in a home setting with a variety of different clients.
Before applying for a personal support worker outreach position you should ask yourself, with the above knowledge as your guideline, whether this position is the right fit for you person Read the rest of this entry »