The initiative is supported by several teachers, including Jonathan Bouchard, from Cégep de Jonquière.
The bursaries are primarily intended to counter the labor shortage by allowing college and university students to receive amounts of up to $9,000.
However, students in social work techniques do not have access to it.
What made us jump out of our chairs was to see that in terms of health and social services, no college program in helping relationships has been added. To have access to the helping relationship at the level of the scholarship, it is on the side of the bachelor’s degree in social work, of the master’s degree, therefore on the university side , laments Jonathan Bouchard.
He specifies that 14 CEGEPs offer the program in Quebec and that 540 students graduated in 2020.
Jonathan Bouchard is a teacher in the social work techniques department at Cégep de Jonquière.
It is still major in Quebec, so to exclude technical social work, for us, it is nonsense. , he points.
Mr. Bouchard maintains that technicians are everywhere in the health sector and that their importance is crucial both in the public system and in community settings.
He affirms that the field is affected by the shortage of manpower like all the others targeted by Quebec to receive the scholarships.
Not a day goes by without the public and community sector contacting us at the social work department to find out if we have graduates who are ready to work. , he mentions.
He believes that excluding the program could aggravate the labor shortage because a young person who is hesitating about his career choice could opt for a technique that would bring him money rather than the opposite.
