At a roundtable with members held in Kelowna this morning, Daniel Fontaine, CEO for the BCCPA, announced the Board of Directors has approved new funding to provide for an overall increase of capacity of the organization over the coming years. In total, another four full-time staff will be hired to help deliver on the goals and objectives approved in the 2017-2020 Strategic Plan earlier this year.
“Our top priority is to provide excellent value for membership and I’m confident this plan hits the mark,” says Daniel Fontaine, CEO for the BCCPA. “This expansion is in direct response to our members telling us they wanted the BCCPA to strategically undertake projects and activities that are best delivered at a province-wide level.”
What follows is a summary of the key areas of expansion planned for the coming months:
Focusing on Home Care & Assisted Living
A Manager of Public Affairs will be hired and will focus 100% of their time on two key portfolios – Assisted Living and Home Care. Over the last several years the BCCPA has continued to grow its home care membership base and this new staff person will work to directly address their issues. Whether it’s access to adequate funding, shortened visit times or the health human resource challenge of filling vacant positions province-wide, our home care members will now be able to access a new dedicated resource.
With the introduction of Bill 16, assisted living operators across B.C. are going to be facing a whole new set of regulatory and policy challenges over the coming months. The Manager will be tasked with the responsibility of navigating these waters and supporting our assisted living members as they transition to more of a “residential care light” model.
Seniors Safety and Quality Program – Affinity Program
A new Director of Programs will be hired to manage the new Seniors Safety and Quality Program as well as support the expansion of our existing member Affinity Program. They will be responsible for ensuring the recently announced $10 million Seniors Safety and Quality Program is operationalized and that funds are directed to care providers across the province starting later this year. They will also manage the expansion of the Affinity Program – a program that works with our commercial members to offer care provider members discounted province-wide pricing on key products and services.
Increase Member Access to Grants and Funding Opportunities
The BCCPA will be working with key partners to develop additional sector-wide grant applications similar to the Seniors Safety and Quality Program. A new Manager of Partnership Development will be hired to research, draft and submit major grant applications that will directly benefit our members and the seniors they care for each day. In addition, the manager will be tasked with developing a new online grants database which will be accessible to all our members within the next year. The database will allow our members to easily access key information regarding the types of municipal, provincial or federal government, foundation and/or academic grants they can apply for to support their local operation. All information gathered, including eligibility criteria for the funding programs, will be broken down into non-profit and for-profit categories.
Expanding Health Human Resources Capacity & Analysis in BC
A significant number of our members are not affiliated with the Health Employers Association of BC (HEABC). As a result, they must negotiate their own collective agreements – often without easy access to the necessary labour data and analysis they need to adequately do the job. The BCCPA will be hiring a new Health Human Resources Analyst in the coming months to significantly expand our capacity regarding the collection and dissemination of labour data and health human resource trends in B.C. The intention is to establish a new cloud-based labour data information bank which will be accessible to all members in the province.
The new analyst will also work to address the need for increased staff in response to the move toward making all care home all within an average of 3.36 direct care hours per health region. They will also be responsible for identifying staff shortages resulting from the need for additional training.
“The addition of these new positions to our team will greatly increase the type of programs and services we can offer to our members over the coming years,” says Fontaine. “I’m also pleased we’ve been able to significantly expand our capacity while at the same time keeping membership dues frozen over the last seven years.”
The BCCPA will be posting these positions on our online job board and other public employment websites over the coming months. Stay tuned for more details as they become available.
