Big changes are coming to how home health care is delivered in Waterloo-Wellington – and those changes are prompting big concerns about what it means for personal support workers and their patients.

According to the Waterloo-Wellington Community Care Access Centre, which oversees the home care system, patients won’t be affected by the changes.

Other stakeholders say there’s no way that can be true.

Starting June 7, the CCAC will split its area into 15 separate neighbourhoods. In each neighbourhood, one company will be designated the primary care company, with a second company as a backup.

That’s a departure from the current system, in which multiple care providers are able to see different clients in the same neighbourhood.

Cidalia Martins currently works as a PSW in Cambridge for CarePartners.

Under the CCAC’s new system, CarePartners will become the secondary provider for that city, behind ParaMed.

Martins says she and 90 other PSWs based in Cambridge were told earlier this week that the only way for them to keep their jobs with CarePartners would be to accept postings to places like Waterloo, Elmira, Guelph or Woodstock.

“Either we go with where they want to send CarePartners PSWs, or we take a layoff,” she said.

The PSWs were given one week to make that decision, Martins said.

Some are worried that they won’t be able to leave Cambridge, because they do not have driver’s licences.

Although a spokesperson for ParaMed says the company is able to bus PSWs between clients, online job ads for ParaMed say a driver’s licence is required for anyone applying to a PSW position.

Martins says she’s worried not only about the impact of the changes on herself and her colleagues, but also on their clients.

However, the CCAC’s CEO says the changes will only apply to newly referred clients, with existing patients able to keep the same PSWs once the neighbourhood system takes effect.

“The existing patients remain with their current providers, and they will continue to receive the services as they always have,” Dale Clement said in an interview.

CarePartners PSWs working in Cambridge can see as many as eight clients per day.