Financial Aid for Personal Support Worker Students

By Cynthia Herron

When you make the decision to return to school, the last thing you want looming over your head is the cost of the education. Stressing about paying for school defeats the motivation to do well in school, creating a lack of comprehension to the program altogether. Personal support worker students today have a great range of options when it comes to financial aid to pay for their education, offering as much as 100% towards the overall costs of schooling.

Grants for Personal Support Worker School
When it comes to personal support worker school financial aid, grants can be the most desirable as they never have to be repaid. Getting grants today can be so simple with several resources online that can connect you directly to the grants you qualify for.

Scholarships for Personal Support Worker Students
There are also many scholarships offered for personal support worker students, offered through several organizations today. Finding these scholarship programs is simple online with large databanks of different programs available.

Student Loans and Fellowships
Other financial aid options offered to personal support worker students include student loans including the Canada Student Loans Program and the Pell Grant Program.   Fellowships are also offered through various to offer that extra helping hand in affording a degree today. The education you receive will mandate the course of your career and you should be able to afford the best. These loans and fellowships just offer extra funding on top of others you may qualify for.

Non-Loan Options for Personal Support Worker Students

It's also possible to gain aid in the form of work study. That way you don't need to take out a loan, but instead 'work your way through school'. Even if you can't afford school on work study wages, you can help offset your loans by gaining some employment.

Getting financial aid for personal support worker certification is a common practice of students today that understand they need the education but just may not have college funding set aside. Many people these days just don’t have a college fund waiting for them to make their decision to pursue higher learning, but certification is a highly critical element of successful advancement into the healthcare industry today. If you desire a personal support worker career, you don’t have to hesitate because of the lack of finances, with many governmental, public, and private funding resources available for students in college today, offered throughout your entire education.

Factors That Can Affect Personal Support Worker’s Salary Ranges

Personal support worker salary ranges, like any other career, start low and work up. There are a few factors involved in how quickly they can increase or simply how high a personal support worker can begin a job at. These are wide ranging and can mean the difference between just getting paid and earning a living.

One of the major factors in determining where the personal support worker salary ranges begin at is the amount of schooling and experience they enter with. Typically, a recent graduate with less than one year of experience will start at an hourly rate of $10.00 to $12.00. This also greatly depends on the area of the country that the employer is located in as the cost of living may be higher or lower than other locations.

As with any career, the more experience, the higher the pay. Personal support workers with 20 or more years of experience can earn between $15 and $20 per hour but again does not factor in location or continuing education. Along with the addition of continuing education, more skills are added, thereby making the personal support worker that much more valuable to an employer by boosting the level of client care that much further.

Depending on location, the personal support worker salary ranges may be affected by the employer’s need for someone who is bilingual. The ability to speak, read and write in another language can be invaluable to an employer located on or near the border of another country. This can be a major factor in areas such as Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada.

There are ways an individual can affect the personal support worker salary ranges in the markets that they are competing in. By choosing a specialty to go along with their standard certifications, such as working with seniors or those clients with disabilities, can make them much more valuable to certain employers.

As with any job, the major contributing factor in salaries is experience. An experienced personal support worker will always fetch a higher hourly rate than a non-experienced personal support worker or someone with very little actual on the job background. This is no different in any respect than any other position available in any field and should be viewed as such.

The best way to insure that the proper hourly rate is being received is by doing some research online. There are many websites that have salary calculators available to tell you what can be expected for an hourly rated based on area, years of experience and educational background. In doing this type of research, one can be assured that whether looking in the area they already live in or maybe searching out that next great adventure, they will be receiving the wage deserved for the service they provide.

Personal Support Worker Salary Charts - Canada

If you're interested in becoming a personal support worker then one thing you'll want to be sure to check into is the pay. It's very important to determine if the career you're considering will pay you enough to support your desired lifestyle.

For example, if you want to live in a house by the beach and drive an expensive sportscar, then a career as a personal support worker may not be the right choice for you (unless you intend to marry well!).

What we've done is provide you with in-depth salary charts so that you may see exactly what personal support workers earn. You'll see which provinces pay the most and can use this information to help you decide if you want to pursue personal support work as a career and where you want to pursue it.

The following personal support worker salary chart is listed here for your convenience.

Labour Market Information For Personal Support Workers

By Cynthia Herron
As the Canadian economy emerges from the current recession, a number of industry sectors will see above average growth to 2015. Among these are occupations in the healthcare field. 　The demographics of the Canadian population will be a major factor in the Canadian economy, affecting both labour market demand and supply. Seventy percent of new jobs to 2015 will be as a result of attrition (retirements, deaths) of existing employees. At the same time, the aging population (and its disproportionate medical needs) will create even greater demand for jobs in occupations in the healthcare field (e.g., personal support workers). 　

Now, more women work outside the home and cannot give full-time care to family members who are elderly, ill or have a disability. As well, the Ontario government has an Aging at Home Strategy. This means that more people may get health care at home instead of at the hospital. This has resulted in substantially more job openings for Personal Support Workers. 　

As healthcare costs rise, that industry will continue to look at cost-cutting strategies. One of these is to "push down" duties currently performed by higher-cost employees (e.g., nurses) to lower-cost staff (e.g., personal support workers), creating more of these types of job opportunities. As a result, the outlook or job prospects for this field are rated as exceptionally good by HRSDC