Activities & Achievements

Summary of 2022-2023

French Language Services – A purposeful practice

The 2022-2023 annual report marks the final chapter of a five-year strategic plan as well as a period of transition for Southern Health-Santé Sud’s French Language Services Unit. New members took office and entered in an evolving landscape while maintaining a strong focus on the delivery of French Language Services.

Engaged Communities and Partners

Throughout the last fiscal year, Southern Health-Santé Sud engaged in several provincial initiatives and projects. These efforts demonstrate the FLS mandate to serve our French language community with the objective of improving outcomes and the client experience.

Active Offer in Action

Southern Health-Santé Sud has continued to promote the active offer of services in French throughout the region. We recognize and embrace our commitment to ensuring a bilingual presence on social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram and Twitter) to enhance the engagement of stakeholders and the community.

With its commitment to community engagement efforts pertaining to the vitality of French language services, Southern Health-Santé Sud’s FLS Unit shares digital communication throughout the organization, designed to keep staff motivated and up to date with current francophone activities and opportunities within the workplace and community. This, with the objective is to strengthen their knowledge and their commitment to the Francophonie and to the French language.

In response to expressed barriers, the offer of courses in French has been enriched with the introduction of a new French language training option that is accessible for various types of work schedules and therefor enables integration of French language. The intranet FLS staff resources and materials have also been refreshed and updated.

Strong FLS Policy & Administrative Framework

We are proud to have introduced the Southern Health-Santé Sud multi-year FLS Strategic Plan 2023-2028. The plan was presented to the Table de concertation rurale du Sud, the Santé en français Board of Directors, the Southern Health-Santé Sud Board of Directors and Regional Leadership Team.

Discussions occurred regionally regarding Southern Health-Santé Sud’s participation as an early adopter of the Official Languages Recognition Program (OLRP) with Accreditation Canada/Health Standards Organization. The future introduction of this OLRP standard is intended to enhance and promote access to health and social services in both official languages while ensuring patient-centered quality care focused on safety and equity.

With the support of Société Santé en français, the new FLS Unit was introduced to the national initiative called Accès-Équité (Equity-Link), an extensive training tool to assist with the implementation of French Language health services, including an interactive online training on the implementation of active offer of French language health services. Southern Health-Santé Sud participated in the 1st National Société Santé en français Working Group – Accès Équité platform.

Collaborative work with Shared Health – Francophone Health and Santé en français included: Active participation in the development of a provincial Linguistic Insecurities Campaign to be launched in 2023-2024; Active participation in a formal research and review of a standardized provincial linguistic evaluation and testing; Within the OZi Portal, content was populated to collect data on all aspects of French language services (human resources, policies, etc.) to ensure better planning of French language health services across the region.

Southern Health-Santé Sud continued its efforts to identify opportunities to standardize Language Related Questions at Patient Registration/Admission/Intake to facilitate the collection of information on French speaking users, with a focus to enhance service delivery and client experience.

Recruitment & Retention

Southern Health-Santé Sud continues to work in collaboration with various community economic development groups throughout the region. Local municipalities are instrumental in our recruitment efforts, supporting us to reach the public and promoting various employment opportunities in Southern Health-Santé Sud.

The use of social media through various platforms as a means to recruit contributes to building our network, enhancing recruitment and engagement efforts with the public, educational institutions, students currently enrolled in health studies, community partners and clients as well as stakeholder groups.

As part of scheduled quality control management, regional hiring procedures were updated to reflect current processes.

Southern Health-Santé Sud continues to collaborate with various stakeholders such as Santé en français, the Université de Saint-Boniface (USB), the Consortium national de formation en santé (CNFS) and the MB Healthcare Providers Network in planning various recruitment initiatives. Due to the pandemic, recruitment activities had been offered in a virtual format but are moving to in-person again. Certain recruitment initiatives have been suspended for the time being, including the yearly regional bus tour in targeted rural sites with nursing students.

Southern Health-Santé Sud participated in three (3) in-province virtual career fairs, eight (8) in-person presentations, six (6) virtual presentations, three (3) bilingual career fairs, three (3) virtual career fairs, one (1) French presentation, and one (1) French presentation promoting vacancies and careers within the region. A presentation was offered specifically in French to the Bachelor of Nursing and Practical Nursing students from the Université de Saint-Boniface. In partnership with Santé en français, Southern Health-Santé Sud also participated in two (2) out-of-province virtual career fair with a focus on bilingual recruitment of nursing and allied positions for areas where there is a high concentration of French-speaking population.

Southern Health-Santé Sud Undergraduate Nurse Employee (UNE) positions are at a total of seven (7) filled positions with seven (7) additional UNE being advertised to date in the 2023 calendar year. Of the positions advertised, two (2) were identified as designated bilingual. The region was successful in recruiting bilingual candidates for these roles.

Position posting profiles for designated bilingual positions were reviewed to support accurate and standardized postings in both official languages. Also, a tracking and reporting mechanism has been developed as part of the hiring process to capture data regarding bilingual capacity by incorporating a self-declaration language proficiency question on the employee profile form.

31 employees successfully completed French language training in this current fiscal year. Additional in-house language training support was also provided to staff in key designated bilingual positions.

55% of designated bilingual positions (excluding vacant positions) in Southern Health-Santé Sud are filled by bilingual incumbents

Southern Health-Santé Sud

516 designated bilingual positions
233 designated bilingual positions filled by bilingual incumbents (55%)
187 designated bilingual positions filled by non-bilingual incumbents
91 designated bilingual positions – vacant

Villa Youville (Independent Agency)

133 designated bilingual positions
87 designated bilingual positions filled by bilingual incumbents
32 designated bilingual positions filled by non-bilingual incumbents
5 designated bilingual positions – vacant

(March 2023)

Translations statistics

Translation requests – 95 requests (2022-23)
Number of words translated – 46 873 words

Challenges

The most significant challenges in regards to FLS continue to be:

Bilingual staffing shortages: evidence supports that the number of designated bilingual positions far exceeds our region’s capacity relative to bilingual high schools graduates; bilingual staff may not necessarily choose to fill a designated bilingual position;
Geographic distances among the French-speaking population;
Access to data on French-speaking populations, acknowledging that there has been progress on these efforts in the past few years;
Awareness and understanding of Active Offer by the public and the staff (ongoing turnover);
Assessing and evaluating client experience regarding FLS; and
Capacity to capture francophone clients at intake.