Ontario Community Support Association (OCSA)

Health Services

Health Services provide care in your home and community when you need special help because of an illness, disability, or limitation due to aging. These services include the following:

Attendant Service
A community service which provides homemaking and personal support services to people over 16 years of age with permanent physical disabilities who require assistance with the activities of daily living and have the ability to direct an attendant to carry out predetermined tasks that they cannot physically do for themselves. Attendant services are based upon the philosophy that an attendant is available at predetermined times to act as a physical extension of the person with a physical disability. The attendant follows the direction of the client and assists the client in carrying out the activities of daily living. [Top]

Foot Care
A service needed by many older people who are unable to care for their own feet and are at increased risk of infection. The service arranges for a person trained in basic or advanced foot care. Service includes trimming toe nails, monitoring the condition of feet, bathing and massaging feet. [Top]

Palliative Care
Palliative Care is the compassionate care of persons who are facing a life threatening or terminal illness, when treatment to prolong life has been discontinued and when control of symptoms, both physical and emotional, are paramount. This service is often provided by a specially trained Personal Support Worker. [Top]

Personal Support Services
Personal Support Services includes personal hygiene activities and assistance with routine activities of daily living. The service could include: mouth care, hair care, menstrual care, preventative skin care, changing dressings, routine hand/foot care, toileting, bowel routine, dressing, transferring, exercising, escorting the person to medically related appointments and tracheostomy care. [Top]

Supportive Housing
Supportive Housing provides personal support services and essential homemaking in permanent, community residential settings for frail or cognitively impaired elderly persons, people with physical disabilities or acquired brain injuries and those living with HIV/AIDS. The Supportive Housing service is for relatively independent people who need support services on a 24 hour basis because they require monitoring, services during the night or emergency response services. People living in Supportive Housing arrangements receive individualized care, a choice of service options, continuing contact with others in their community and the opportunity to influence decisions about both the housing and support services they receive. [Top]

Helping People Live at Home

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