Role
Community Health Worker / Care Aide
The core role. Personal care, home support and companionship in clients' own homes across Metro Vancouver.
We are not taking applications right now. Check back later.
- Employment type
- Full-time or part-time
- Where
- Coquitlam, Vancouver, Burnaby, Richmond, North Vancouver, West Vancouver, Surrey, Port Moody, Port Coquitlam, New Westminster
- Schedule
- Published two weeks ahead. Days, evenings and weekends available. Tell us the hours you can genuinely commit to and we will build around them rather than around a template.
Hourly.
What you would be doing
- Personal care: bathing, dressing, toileting, grooming and safe transfers
- Home support: meals, laundry, light housekeeping and errands
- Companionship, outings and helping people stay connected to their own lives
- Medication reminders for clients who manage their own medication
- Recording each task at the point of care, on your phone, as you go
- Noticing and reporting changes in a client's condition, mood or circumstances
- Flagging hazards in a home so the next caregiver knows before they arrive
What you need
- Registration with the BC Care Aide & Community Health Worker Registry, or eligibility to register
- Health Care Assistant certificate from a recognised BC programme, or equivalent assessed by the Registry
- A current Criminal Records Review Program check for work with vulnerable adults (we arrange it)
- Current first aid and CPR level C
- Ability to communicate clearly in English, in writing and in person
- A smartphone you are comfortable using
Helpful, but not required
- A second language: Cantonese, Mandarin, Punjabi, Tagalog, Farsi, Spanish and Korean are all in demand
- A driver's licence and access to a vehicle
- Dementia care training or experience
- Palliative care experience
- Experience with lifts, transfers and mobility equipment
The job, honestly
You will be alone in someone’s home, making judgement calls, several times a day. That is the part that suits people who like the work and does not suit people who want to be told exactly what to do at every moment.
Most days are ordinary. Some are not: a client on the floor, a family arguing in the hallway, a wound that looks worse than it did on Tuesday. What we owe you: you always know who to call, and you are never blamed for escalating something that turned out to be nothing.
What we will not ask you to do
- Perform a restricted clinical activity (administering medication, complex wound care and the like). That is a nurse’s work.
- Transfer someone alone where the care plan says two people or equipment.
- Ask you to write up your visits at home in the evening.
Who tends to do well here
People who are steady rather than dramatic. People who will phone the office because something felt off rather than waiting to be sure. People who understand that helping someone wash is a matter of dignity before it is a matter of hygiene.
Experience matters less than judgement.
Not registered with the Registry yet?
If you have finished a recognised Health Care Assistant programme and simply have not registered, we will walk you through it. If you were educated outside Canada, the Registry runs a competency assessment pathway and we can point you at it.
If you have not trained yet at all, the province may pay for it. The Health Career Access Program covers tuition and pays a living allowance while you study. Our guide to becoming a health care assistant in BC sets out every route.
What you can expect from us
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Your schedule, two weeks ahead
Published a fortnight out and not casually changed. We would rather commit to fewer hours and keep them than overpromise and rearrange your week at short notice.
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Mostly the same clients, not a fresh list every week
Most of your schedule is regular clients, so you get to know how someone takes their tea and what a bad day looks like for them.
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Someone to call, day or night
A coordinator is on call 24 hours a day if something comes up at an address.
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Paid travel between clients
Paid travel time between clients, and kilometres paid when you drive between clients or drive a client. Your trip to your first visit and home from your last is not paid.
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Checked on when you work alone
Wellbeing checks at the start and end of every visit, more often where a home’s risk calls for it, and a follow-up if you miss one. Known risks at an address reach you before you arrive.
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No paperwork at the kitchen table
You record tasks on your phone as you go, and it works with no signal.
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A warning before anything lapses
Your registrations and certificates are tracked in one place, with a warning well before anything expires.
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You are told what is going on
A care plan change, a new risk at an address, a client back from hospital: you hear it from us before you arrive.