North Bay will soon see the creation of 60 personal support worker and nursing positions and it’s all thanks to The Village.
The jobs are coming from Sudbury-based Canadian Shield Health Care Services and represent a return of the agency to North Bay.
Company CEO Maneesh Walia told Moose News that Canadore told him about The Village and what it represented and Walia says that helped accelerate the comeback to North Bay.
“Without The Village happening, our plan would have taken longer and I don’t think we’d be able to create as many jobs as quickly as we anticipate being able to do,” Walia said.
Walia says The Village lines up perfectly with what Shield does and the plan is to have an office presence at the new facility.
In addition, Shield will be hiring some of Canadore’s health care graduates.
Walia says a job fair will take place in the next two to three weeks looking for qualified people to do the work.
However, they won’t all be graduates.
“We need to have a strong base of different skills sets,” Walia said.
“New grads are great but you still need to have experienced PSWs and experienced nurses. It’s a team and it has to be diverse.”
The 60 jobs once in place, will create an annual payroll easily surpassing $1 million.
Walia says Shield employees work with people in their homes adding most of the time the clients want to remain in their home.
“The goal is to keep them happy and service them in their home if that’s what they want,” he said.
Shield’s specialty mostly lies in nursing and PSWs but also has health care aids who don’t have a PSW certificate and it also works with primary physicians.
The agency serves the West Nipissing corridor to Mattawa with plans to possibly expand into the Powassan area.
It also already has a presence in Elliot Lake, Espanola and Manitoulin Island.
Walia believes The Village’s approach to health care will pave the way for other institutions to mimic its success.
