January 10, 2007
Orillia -- An interactive and informative education program has been developed to raise the profile of health care professions in Ontario's Francophone and Anglophone rural communities.
Driven by the growing need for health professionals in the rural community, this initiative was started in 2003 by the South Central Regional Network of CFDCs. Later partnering with "Le Regroupement des intervenantes et intervenants francophones en santé et en services sociaux de l'Ontario (RIFSSSO)," the two groups worked to create an educational program for school children in both official languages, informing them of health care careers available outside of the urban centres.
"The growing need for health care workers and the problem of youth out-migration were the driving forces behind the project" says Alison Braun, of the Orillia Area Community Development Corporation. "Already we are receiving extremely position feedback, from both students and teachers using the resources."
The health care careers package includes a DVD suitable for use in class room presentations, while the website goes into more detail, cataloguing over 40 different careers in the health care profession as well as proving information about why your community needs you. The website also offers lesson plans for downloading to assist teachers of Grade 7-10. A feature called "the decision tree" provides information about higher education and career requirements while testing students on their knowledge. Another feature called "playing the game," requires participants to match career choices with their appropriate description. This provides students with the opportunity for individual interactive learning allowing them to focus their research on their particular area of interest.
All of the resources are now available in both English and French, as the French website is now complete and the DVD was completed May, 2006. To date 4,000 English language DVDs and posters have been distributed to all elementary and secondary schools, libraries, employment centres, and youth aboriginal centres within the South Central Region, as well as Community Futures Development Corporations (CFDCs) throughout Ontario. This has provided hundreds or teachers with the resources they require to inform young people about health care professions while inspiring them to remain within their rural community.
The French resources provided by the program works towards RIFSSSO's goal of providing improved accessibly and quality of French language health and social services available to school age children. The aim is to provide all of the 1,500 French language elementary and secondary schools with the packages by May of 2006.
"RIFSSSO had already begun a similar project and it seemed like an obvious move to combine forces, rather than duplicate, in order to provide comparable tools for both English and French speaking students," says Braun.
Additional information can be found at www.communityhealthcareers.ca
Funding for this project was gained from the Knowledge Based Economy in 2004 and pooled resources from the South Central Region offices and Regional Network in 2005 and 2006. The South Central Regional Network includes the Bruce, Saugeen, Orillia, North Simcoe, Nottawasaga, Centre for Business and Economic Development, and Wellington-Waterloo CFDCs.