Graduate’s Second Career in Long-Term Care Started Alongside Pandemic
March 3, 2021
Initially, Wewer’s father acted as caregiver to Wewer’s grandmother, but she eventually needed to be moved into a long-term care facility. It was her care at this home that inspired Wewer to begin a new chapter.
“One day my dad was talking about this lady who comes and plays bingo with [the long-term care residents] and brings them stuffed animals and does visits with them and how much my Oma loved it,” said Wewer, “and I thought, I’ve never heard of this, what kind of work is this?”
Something about the description really struck a chord with Wewer, and she couldn’t get it out of her mind. She decided to look into what kind of education you needed take on a position like this, and spoke with a counsellor at Algonquin College. She discovered she could pursue a career in the field through the Recreation and Leisure program at the Ottawa Campus, and that was that. At 34 years-old, Wewer shut down her daycare and went back to school. She was nervous about going back as a mature student and being the oldest in class, but any nerves she had quickly vanished.
“It was the best experience, I think, of my life,” she said. “The teachers—they’re teachers but they’re your friends. They really help, they really care about the students, they talk to you after class, they make sure you’re doing well in all aspects of your life. The courses that they offer—it’s unbelievable how much you take into the actual day to day of the job…I loved the course.”
But as graduation approached, so did the pandemic—it was winter 2020.
“Our last presentation we had was on the Friday right before things shut down,” explained Wewer. “We started our five-week placement on the Monday when everything was cancelled, and I was quite nervous when everything was cancelled because I wasn’t sure if we were going to graduate.”
But she did graduate, finishing co-op through a power point presentation instead of in-person learning, and even earning a job out of her placement. “It’s just kind of been a whirlwind since then really,” she said. “Starting long-term care in a pandemic—we were all starting new and fresh—and nobody knew what we were doing, so we all worked as a team and took it day by day.”
Wewer works full-time in the recreation department of Perth’s Lanark Lodge Long-Term Care Home, helping run activities and special events, coordinating meetings and family visits through Zoom, FaceTime and Skype, and helping organize scheduling and day-to-day life.
"One-on-one contact is extremely important right now with the residents,” she said, “Exercise programs, anything to touch with our mental wellness, physical wellness, cognitive—we try to do activities based on all of those prerequisites to make sure everyone is living their best life right now.”
Luckily, Lanark Lodge hasn’t had an outbreak of COVID-19, as so many other homes have. “We’ve been very fortunate,” she said. While the pandemic has been an intense and challenging time to start a career in long-term care, Wewer would not trade it for the world.
“There’s not a single aspect that I don’t love about my job,” she said. “Walking in and hearing everyone saying hi as soon as I walk in, and helping people … it’s holding their hand and reading stories, you know, and when loved ones can’t be there, that’s what I’m there for, and that’s what I’m there to do: to make sure the family can rest easy knowing their loved one is taken care of…. and I think now, especially with the pandemic, that is so relevant in people’s lives and they understand that recreation is so important these days … People see you need that recreation, that leisure. You need that contact.”