Partnerships create health career opportunities

Page 9

Health districts in the Meadow Lake and Fort Qu'Appelle areas are the latest partners in a program aimed at increasing the numbers of Aboriginal people employed in all occupational levels in the health sector.

The Northwest Health District and the Touchwood Qu'Appelle Health District are now partners in the Aboriginal Employment Development Program (AEDP), a program run by the Saskatchewan Association of Health Organizations (SAHO). The goal of the program is to help health organizations to work towards building a representative workforce.

A representative workforce is defined by SAHO as "one in which Aboriginal people are employed in all classifications and at all levels (entry, middle and senior management) in Saskatchewan's health sector workforce in proportion to their potential labor force numbers in the population."

The AEDP was launched in 1995 as an initiative of Intergovernmental and Aboriginal Affairs. According to Victoria Gubbels, Aboriginal employment development manager with SAHO, the decision was made to target the health sector with the program because of the size of the workforce, and the diversity of positions in that workforce.

Of the 32 health districts in Saskatchewan, 21 districts are partners in the program, with two more expected to sign partnership agreements in the near future.

By partnering with SAHO in the AEDP program, Gubbels said, health districts benefit by getting help to ensure they can meet their future demands for employees.

"What we're doing with this strategy, is we're actively targeting the Aboriginal community and we're going out and we're providing the community, the Aboriginal community, with information about health careers so that Aboriginal people can chose health careers as their career of choice and health employers become their employer of choice."

According to information on the SAHO Web site, by 2030, Aboriginal people will make up about one-third of Saskatchewan's population, and 72 per cent of that population will be of labor force age.

"So what we do is we help the districts with succession planning, and we help them to tap into this large, expanding labor force pool. So what we do is we work with districts. We bring a number of partnerships to the table. We bring employers, we bring the unions, we bring the Aboriginal community, and we bring training institutions. Because this is the partnership approach. We're not advocating that, here's the program, here's how you do it. We advocate, we're all partners in this process, and we're working the process out together. And we're looking at targeted training issues. So it helps the employers in the long run, because when you target training that meets their needs, well, it's going to meet their needs today and in the future."

The program involves working closely with the Aboriginal community, Gubbels said.

"When we come together, we have a number of steering committees. And what we do is we invite people from Aboriginal institutions. We have Gabriel Dumont, we have SIIT (Saskatchewan Indian Institute of Technologies), SIFC (Saskatchewan Indian Federated College). We bring them to the tables where we develop strategies together. So for example, if we say right now, okay, we really need some LPNs, we'll go to Dumont or we'll go to SIFC, or we'll go to FSIN or SIIT, and say, we have a need as an employer. So we have direct access to those contacts. We bring people together, and we say, here's what we need, and then the institution, we work closely with them to develop the training, and they recruit Aboriginal people into those training programs," she said.

"What we're doing is a focused approach in response to RCAP (Royal Commission on Aboriginal People), who recommended that when working with Aboriginal people, we need a different approach to employment equity. This is the different approach. It's an approach that has been developed by Aboriginal people, for Aboriginal people," she said.

" I think basicaly, what these partnerships are providing us is the avenue and the tool to bring both the Aboriginal community and the non-Aboriginal community together. Because in the past, we've walked separate paths. And what this program is helping us to do is to create that much-needed integration into our workplaces. Not assimilation, but integration into our work places. And so, I think that's why we're looking at some success with the program. And generally, the employers and people that we talk with, and the Aboriginal people, are really quite excited about this initiative."