One essential yardstick for measuring national advancement in any country is examining the ratio of children that survive childhood and the number of individuals that reach elderly age. Achieving these two critical aspects of modern civilization won’t be easy without caregivers. In advanced nations, dedicated caregivers are crucial.
As more individuals reach elderly age, family alone won’t be able to care for them. This is especially given that in some families, both parents could be 90+ and their children could also be in their 70+ these scenarios are not very unusual in Canada. In this case, one can find two generations in the same family needing care. Apart from adults, minors also sometimes need caregivers.
Reason for the Huge Market for Caregiver Jobs in Canada
As life is getting tougher, especially given population growth and the increase in what a worthy life should be, individuals work longer hours nowadays to fulfill life obligations. Looking after elderly relatives and parenting is taking a different dimension these days and not just elderly individuals need care but babysitting is now an essential aspect of Canadian society.
Now we can see an emerging bridge between the old and the young, these two categories of people are crucial to any society as the ages represent service, sacrifices, and heritage while the young represent the future, the elderly represent heritage; both these critical parts of society may not be able to care for themselves adequately.
This leaves the future (children) and the heritage (elders) in a very vulnerable state since the present (adults) are busy working for the future and preserving the heritage. Then there seems to be a missing link. That missing link is the caregiver.
Such caregivers will provide much-needed attention to the elderly and the children while the energetic adults work to ensure that Canada functions properly. From here one may understand why Canada maintains an immigration policy geared towards the ease of migration of caregivers through visa sponsorship.
The Role of Visa Sponsorship in Caregiver Supply to Canada
Canada already faces manpower insufficiency, to allow more capable hands in the workplace, the parenting role needs to be assigned to others especially if young parents are more qualified for crucial roles.
Every country seeks to retain its best brains, this creates such a situation that highly intelligent migrants may not always be available as highly skilled individuals are usually employed in their home countries. In this case, countries ensure that migrants take on easier roles needing less education thereby enabling educated or highly skilled adult citizens to take care of critical workspace.
For this to be effective, there should be individuals who must care for the dependents of Canada’s working class or other categories of actively engaged individuals. The government understands that while individuals owe responsibilities to the government, they also owe more to their families.
This means the government must ensure that dependents of workers or individuals on other engagements must get adequate care hence the visa sponsorship option to care for dependents of busy or engaged individuals.
To ensure a sufficient supply of caregivers, Canada maintains a friendly migration policy towards the sector through visa sponsorship.
Let’s shed light on the concept of visa sponsorship
Visa sponsorship is a migration model for professional or family purposes. Given family-motivated visa sponsorship, Canada-domiciled family members may migrate relatives outside Canada using the family visa sponsorship model whereas professional migration is when firms migrate their workforce. Such migration by firms or organizations is termed employment-based sponsorship.
Responsibilities that must be satisfied before migrating a Caregiver to Canada
Migrating caregivers into Canada comes with several requirements or responsibilities divided into those of the applicant and those of the sponsor.
What a sponsor must do before migrating a caregiver
- Satisfy the provisions of the Labour Market Impact Assessment: This is to ensure that Canadian employment space is secure and not taken over by migrants.
- Support migrating caregivers: Anyone migrating to a different clime may encounter surprises. The applicant will need support both at the application stage and in the early migration days. The employer is expected to be supportive.
- Properly guide Applicant, especially upon arrival: The Canadian system is different. Such differences can be environmental or may be connected to the legal system. To be on the safer side of events, applicants need to be properly guided and the employer is in a better position to provide such guidance.
- Effectively screen Applicant to avoid migrating individuals that instead of adding to the Canadian society positively may bring degradation.
Responsibilities of Applicant
While migrating to Canada to care for dependents is a nice gesture, it is a delicate responsibility that must be left in the hands of responsible individuals. Canada is careful about the character of individuals that will work as caregivers in the country as such a series of immigration processes is performed to ensure the credibility of migrants.
These involve a series of responsibilities that give authorities chances to learn more about applicants. To get through this stage, the applicant is expected to provide the following:
- Valid passport of home country or citizenship country:
- Recent passport photographs
- Tender a recent police report on character quality.
- Provide security clearance (there could be an exemption from providing this)
- Provide a summary of experience or employability through a CV or Resume.
- Provide additional background check documents like birth certificates or equivalent affidavits.
- Apply for and be issued a work permit.
- Have a valid contract between the applicant and the employer.
- Indicate visa affordability by tendering a bank statement or other proof of affluence.
Eligibility Criteria for working as a caregiver
Whether caring for the elderly or minors, criteria are usually similar. Although characters may differ between adults and minors, it require similar temperaments to care for either. These are some of the qualities that may make your caregiving job more effective and may even improve your employability:
- Empathy: Caring for both children and elders need empathic individuals who understand the feelings, pains, and joys of others. It requires love and true intentions to care. Everyone has their challenges, both the young and the old. Empathic individuals can understand others and are better at helping others overcome personal challenges.
- Patience: caring for dependents needs patience. You must understand that elderly or younger people may take longer to cross the road and you will have to wait. Patience here doesn’t just apply to mobility, it requires the understanding that things generally take longer with these categories of people.
- Ability to drive: Caregiving especially caring for elders may require the caregiver to play several crucial roles. This includes accompanying care recipients to events and even to hospitals. Given that most elderly Canadians may own a car, in situations where such elders may no longer be capable of driving, a caregiver can be of assistance.
- Basic understanding of adult or child healthcare: Irrespective of whether the caregiver will be attending to minors or elders, basic healthcare understanding is important. To prevent drug abuse in the case of minors, the caregiver must be someone who can understand basic medication prescriptions.
This also applies to elderly caregiving. Caregivers sometimes assist doctors in administering prescriptions, monitoring vitals, or watching over sick care recipients.
- Respect: Respect for individuals and their privacy is crucial to caregiving jobs.
Benefits of Caregiving jobs in Canada
Working in Canada has several advantages whether you care for the elderly or minors. These benefits include:
- A sense of belonging: Canada has a strong love for family. Nearly every person appreciates their families but in Canada, families seem to take extra importance. Families are expected to stick together. In many cases, family isn’t exactly biological but when someone accepts another as theirs, loves them genuinely, and cares for such persons especially when in need, that’s how a family should be.
A home is a place where there’s love and value. Caring for family members may indirectly make you one of such family. Your job can land you an informal adoption by a family in Canada just for caring for their loved ones.
- Good pay: Caregiving jobs in Canada whether for minor or elderly dependents are lucrative. Though the pay may vary among employers, on average, Canadian caregivers may earn around $15.5 (CAD) an hour.
- Likely insurance coverage: For firms in Canada, insurance coverage seems like a tradition and one of the elite job perks. Insurance usually distinguishes exceptional firms from mediocre ones. Nearly everyone wants to be distinguished, and as such top firms in Canada usually include insurance coverage.
- Making impacts: While several people are in most jobs for the money, some are in their endeavors for passion. For several caregivers, caring for dependents is a way to give back to humanity.
- Additional goodwill and gifts: When you care for others, you may realize that what goes around may come around. In return for caring for dependents, you may get care yourself. Such care may come in as gifts, tips, and other benefits. Such can come from your care recipients’ families or friends and even sometimes from your care recipients.
- Possible accommodation: This is especially the case in several in-house care, sometimes your caregiving job may include a provision of shelter. Such shelter may be in your care recipient’s home.
- Friendship: You care for humans so there are high chances that our social nature will come into play. Whether you care for children or adults, there are chances that friendship may develop. Apart from your care recipient, their social circle also has a high chance of establishing a healthy friendship with you.
Firms in Canada hiring Caregivers that offer sponsorship visa
Caregiving jobs are delicate everywhere not just in Canada. Apart from elderly care homes, families desire to know with whom they trust their dependents, especially minors. Several caregiving jobs whether elderly care or minor care may be in-house. Families mostly rely on staffing companies or familiar migrants already in Canada. These are some visa-sponsoring entities for Caregivers in Canada:
- Hospital of Eastern Ontario: For minor caregiving, parents are usually skeptical about directly employing migrants to look after their wards. Some parents prefer employing individuals sponsored by familiar pediatrics or similar facilities. Hospital of Eastern Ontario is one of the Canadian pediatric facilities that sponsor visas and can be a source of children’s caregivers.
- Randstad Canada: Many Canadian families unable to migrate caregivers for their dependents rely on staffing companies. Randstad is a renowned international staffing company capable of migrating any class of legitimate workforce. Several Canadian families and caregiving homes rely on them for their staffing.
- Senior Living Facilities: For some elders needing care, senior living centers across Canada are their best option. Senior living centers have the added advantage of government intervention. Senior living facilities in Canada that support visa sponsorship include Sienna Senior Living Inc. and Cogir Senior Living.
Ways to secure caregiving jobs in Canada remotely
For many Canadian caregiving job hopefuls still in their home countries, the thought of gaining a Canadian job without first setting foot on Canadian soil can be draining; you need not worry, with these reliable approaches, you can secure a Canadian caregiving job remotely.
- Reach potential employees through social media: Caregiving is a social job and through social media, you can reach those in most need of your service. Today, most adult Canadians are on one social media or another.
Remember that while caregiving facilities exist, your primary employers as caregivers are families and individuals. Parents employ caregivers for their children and other family members employ caregivers for their elderly so in a nutshell, caregiving job whether working for a facility or in-house care is a people-oriented career path. Connecting with people and caregiving enterprises through social media will improve your chances of securing employment.
- Build an impressive professional profile: Professional platforms are amazing for landing a job. Most firms in Canada maintain profiles on professional platforms like LinkedIn. Creating a professional profile on such a platform can give a great impression especially when you reach out to these firms after learning about them.
Apart from creating professional profiles, maintaining accounts on dedicated employers’ platforms is also a great way of landing a job remotely. If you intend to go the way of using a professional or dedicated employment platform, please maintain a polite online personality as most employers examine potential employees using online profiles as a primary means of learning about you.
Ideal Canadian Work Visa for Migrating Caregivers
Whether you are to care for minors or the elderly, a single visa category may apply to both. In this case, we recommend the TEER 4 work visa. This is given our belief that caregiving jobs can be undertaken with a high school diploma, on-the-job guidance, or experience in related fields like nursing science or hospitality management.
If you possess higher qualifications or are unclear on what visa will work for you, please seek further guidance from a Canadian immigration expert.
Conclusion
It is a way to rekindle hope in humanity when we care for others. At the same time caregiving jobs in Canada whether elderly care or child caregiving can be lucrative. Whatever your motivation is in migrating to Canada to give care, it is a great step and while at that, we encourage you to keep moving towards accomplishing your migration.