Home care workers are scrambling to acquire full-time work, adjust their home schedules, and say goodbye to beloved residents before they are no longer allowed to work in more than one long-term care facility.

Given five days' notice, those working at personal care home facilities are now quickly rearranging their lives to accommodate new COVID-19 health and safety regulations.

On Monday, the Province of Manitoba announced that those working at long-term care facilities will no longer be able to work at more than one at a time.

"What they are trying to do is prevent the potential of spreading COVID-19 across personal care homes," Shannon McAteer, the Manitoba Health Care Coordinator with CUPE, says. "(Health care works) are all about protecting the residents they care for."

h these crazy times... people have made arrangements with whoever, however they can to have their children cared for."

McAteer is advocating for workers, saying more time is needed to make employment changes. She says she gets hundreds of calls a day from concerned workers about the quick turn around time, wondering what to do. 

McAteer says they do not have all the answers to people's questions yet, as it is all new to her too.

"In healthcare, before COVID-19, there was already a staffing crisis," she says.