More workers at integrated healthcare facilities who are helping some of Saskatchewan’s most vulnerable citizens through the pandemic are now eligible for the Saskatchewan Temporary Wage Supplement Program.
Through a re-assessment of eligibility, the program has been further expanded to include all workers, regardless of income level, at integrated healthcare facilities which provide both short-term and long-term health care.
A new application form is currently being developed for this expansion, and will be available in the coming days. Applications will be accepted until September 1, 2020.
“Our government wants to ensure that through this program we are helping workers who are caring for some of our most vulnerable,” Finance Minister Donna Harpauer said. “Often family members help support their loved ones in long-term care in these facilities, but visitation restrictions due to public health orders have made that more difficult, putting more pressure on the workers in these integrated healthcare facilities.”
Previously, workers at integrated facilities were eligible if they had a gross salary from all sources of less than $2,500 per month and earned less than $24.00 per hour. That income threshold has been lifted, as it was when the program was modified in June for workers at licensed personal care homes and special care homes.
For each eligible worker, the temporary wage supplement is $400 for each four-week period, up to 16 weeks, for the period from March 15, 2020 to July 4, 2020.
The wage supplement will be provided to full-time, part-time and casual workers, and includes anyone employed by an eligible facility, but does not include third-party contract service providers working at those facilities.
In addition to integrated healthcare facilities, eligible facilities include:
• Personal care homes licensed pursuant to The Personal Care Home Act
• Special care homes designated pursuant to The Provincial Health Authority Act
• Approved private service homes defined in The Residential Services Act
• Licensed or unlicensed family child care homes as defined in The Child Care Act
• Unlicensed private assisted living facilities, where residents are provided with direct assistance or supervision of daily living activities
• Community-based group homes
• Licensed childcare facilities
• Emergency shelters
• Transition shelters – short stay/emergency, transition housing
• Integrated healthcare facilities; and
• Home care workers providing care to seniors in their own homes.
