Conestoga College to graduate 10x more PSWs after $5M donation

Conestoga College will soon be expanding its personal support worker (PSW) program thanks to a $5 million donation from the Cambridge-based Cowan Foundation.

Maureen Cowan, chairperson for the foundation, said the donation was in honour of her grandmother Frances.

"She always had an interest in Alzheimer's and dementia and how the elderly are cared for in the latter years of their life," she told CBC News.

"I think a lot of that came from her twin brother, who suffered with Alzheimer's and was in a long term care facility for a number of years. There were PSWs in the front line of all of that."

The multi-million donation is both the largest the foundation has ever made and the largest ever received by Conestoga College.

The expansion of the program will help increase PSW student enrolment from 200 students a year, to roughly 2,000 students over five years, according to Conestoga College president John Tibbits.

He hopes the increase will create more job opportunities and help address the urgent need for more health care professionals due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

"When this pandemic hit, it was very, very clear that this issue is a fundamental problem," he said.

Cowan agreed, saying it was something her own grandmother took notice of when caring for her twin brother.

"I think the challenge of PSWs has really been highlighted through the circumstances we now find ourselves in and seeing where the stress is on the system on the front line and the lack of qualified PSWs available to support the elderly," she said.

Tibbits hopes to make the program more accessible to people living in rural communities such as Mount Forest, Paris and Startford.

In a release, Conestoga College said its partnership with the Cowan Foundation will build on the college's existing Cowan Health Sciences Centre to "create an epicentre for remote simulation learning" and work on a tailored delivery approach better support PSW students."