The Alberta Continuing Care Association (ACCA) represents the owners and operators of continuing care facilities and home care and support organizations in Alberta.
Through advocacy, communicationand partnership development, we provide focus and a unified voice on behalf of our members towards strategic planning and positive outcomes for the best possible continuing care for all Albertans.
Our members are experienced, knowledgeable and passionate about providing quality and innovative care. Our active and diverse membership helps ensure our representation with government, the public, and other partners and stakeholders is accurate and informed. Our Members Truly Are Our Greatest Strength!
1. Advocacy
Throughout 2020, the ACCA intensified our advocacy efforts to unprecedented levels, supporting our members’ priorities in managing the COVID-19 pandemic. We significantly strengthened our collaborative relationships with Alberta Health and Alberta Health Services (AHS), as well as Alberta’s Seniors and Housing Ministry.
Key Highlights:
The ACCA participated in weekly pandemic meetings with the Ministry of Health, representing membership priorities and concerns. At the national level, we collaborated with the Canadian Association for Long Term Care (CALTC), advocating to Alberta’s Premier and Members of Parliament to highlight our top priorities, including infrastructure and COVID-19 continuing care funding.
The ACCA successfully advocated for funding support to help the Continuing Care (CC) sector with COVID-19 incremental costs. The ACCA was invited to share in the Health Minister’s announcement of $170 million in funding for designated supportive living, long-term Care, and seniors’ lodges in the ongoing battle against COVID-19. Following an intensive advocacy campaign to prioritize modern, functional CC, the ACCA was invited to jointly announce Alberta’s initiative for new publicly funded spaces and communities identified as priority. The funding capital component of this initiative will be explored in the future. Board Chair, Jennifer McCue, was also invited by Minister of Labour, Jason Copping, to lead a team in providing recommendations regarding operator challenges in the implementation of the Single Site order and the Health Care Aid $2 Top-up.
2. Member Engagement
The mental health and wellness of your teams and how to best support them has long been identified as a key topic of concern for our members. This year, the ACCA pursued various options to address mental health and wellness as we entered into an industry partnership with online resiliency organization Headversity. We also partnered with Clinical Psychologist Dr. Al-Noor Mawani who offered preferred rates for ACCA Members.
In 2020 we also launched the ACCA Membership Webinar Series. Our webinar series was attended by over 300 attendees and all webinars were rated at least 4/5 in satisfaction from the members and over 90% found them of value.
We are thrilled to again be offering a series of Webinars and the return of our annual Inspiring Quality Conference in 2021. Stay tuned for exciting details!
3. Industry Leadership
The ACCA hosted a virtual Town Hall for our home care members to assess the impact of COVID-19. Going forward, all streams of CC have our commitment that we will do all that we can to ensure your voice is heard. Terms of Reference and priorities have been identified for proposed ACCA working groups for 2021 which include the Home Care Working Group, Policy and Legislation Working Group, Human Resources and Labour Relations Working Group, and Public Relations and Communications Working Group.
ACCA members came together to develop the ACCA’s government input on the year’s greatest priorities, including; extraordinary operations costs related to COVID-19, Home Care systems support and essential services legislation.
We supported the growth of knowledge within CC, facilitating connections and sharing leading research projects, including; National Institute on Aging, University of Alberta and Health Quality Council of Alberta.
