Leonila Vega
The following speech was given by Direct Care Alliance Executive Director Leonila Vega at a celebration of the opening of the DCA’s Manhattan office on September 11, 2008.
Good evening, members of the board and friends. I want to thank you for making time to join us as we celebrate an important milestone in the journey of the Direct Care Alliance.
We were incorporated in 2006 with a goal to develop worker voices, develop coalitions, and become an independent organization. I want to thank our host, the Institute on Immigrant Concerns, for welcoming us into this, our new home. As a young organization, we are nurturing a movement designed to improve the quality of care for elders and persons with disabilities by improving the job of the direct care worker.
Much is owed to our friends and supporters. In that regard, I want to thank Lisa Hackett of the Community Resource Exchange for the invaluable assistance that ensured a successful transition from our home at PHI to this, our new home. I also want to Thank Donna Kelsh at the Institute for Immigrant Concerns for the warm welcome we have received. But in particular, I want to thank PHI for nurturing the Direct Care Alliance.
PHI’s vision brought to reality an urgently needed organization because PHI recognized that the millions of direct care workers who are the crucial link to the health, safety, independence, and quality of life for millions of elders and persons with disabilities, needed an organization of their own. They needed an organization that would advocate for direct care workers as its primary constituency, one that would provide leadership training, and gather elders, persons with disabilities, and employers into state coalitions and a national coalition that work together to improve the direct care worker’s job and thereby ensure an ample, well trained direct care workforce. Thank you, Steven Dawson.
Our mission is to improve the quality of care and supports that elders and persons with disabilities receive by improving the direct care job.
Statistics show that direct care is the fastest growing occupation in the country — that, as baby boomers reach retirement age, the demand for direct care workers will continue to increase. The Department of Labor projects that an additional one million workers will be needed in the next few years. Currently at four million, the direct care worker occupation surpasses the projected demand in other service industries such as registered nurses, teachers, and restaurant workers.
At the same time, demographic projections show that millions of baby boomers will be turning sixty by the thousands. In addition, unlike past generations, the nursing home will not do as a primary option for baby-boomers. At the same time, technological advances make it possible for baby boomers to delay or altogether avoid nursing homes and lead independent and productive lives in their homes and communities. Therefore, resulting in the exponentially growing demand for DCWS.
These facts indicate that the direct care industry will need to attract millions of new workers into the long-term care workforce in large numbers to ensure our parents, and we ourselves, can lead productive and independent lives.
Yet, if you were not already a direct care worker but were interested in becoming one, this is what you would find:
• The only meaningful certification is that of a certified nursing assistant.
• State-required training requirements and pay are higher for dog groomers and manicurists than for certified nursing assistants.
• Wages are stagnant and, as a direct care worker, you would be lucky to get a job paying even the minimum wage.
• The profession does not offer promotional and advancement opportunities. You could work as a direct care worker for 20-30 years and see few if any, wage increases.
• Although you, as a direct care worker, ensure the health and safety of your and your employer’s loved ones, you will have limited, if any, access to health care benefits.
• Your work will be isolated and invisible to policy makers that design long-term care and healthcare policy affecting your job, because there are few, if any, avenues for you to share your hard-earned wisdom to improve the direct care job.
• Yet, at the end of the day in millions of places, from nursing homes, to assisted living settings, to one’s own home, it is you and the person you provide services for that must implement a care plan and ensure safety, independence, and comfort. We all know that direct care workers are the backbone of the long term care system.
Clearly, the problem is too big for any one constituency or group to solve alone. Elders, persons with disabilities, and their families must advocate along with policy makers and direct care workers to work together to solve this workforce crisis. A friend once said that direct care workers perform the “work of the angels.” I agree, but these angels are overburdened, undervalued, underpaid, and there are NOT enough of them. So, I ask you today to join us in helping these workers doing the work of the angels.
I mentioned the visionary idea of PHI to nurture the development of an organization that would speak for workers; however, the Alliance did not come to fruition by vision alone. It needed a visionary funder that understood what it took to build advocacy movements. I want to thank the Atlantic Philanthropies for their support. As we move forward, we will be implementing the following initiatives:
1. Support the Development of the Voices Institute, the DCA signature initiative that provides leadership skills to direct care workers;
2. Support the development of national partnership of worker associations and coalitions, and start associations we gathered together at our conference in Iowa;
3. Use our coalitional capacity, along with the graduates of the Voices Institute, to work with other national organizations to implement the recommendations of the recent Institute of Medicine report about the direct care workers;
4. Develop and support comprehensive solutions that meaningfully improve the training and compensation of the direct care worker’s job
5. Continue to provide technical assistance to state based associations and coalitions to grow their membership, develop their advocacy agenda, improve the organizational capacity of associations, and build benefits for the Direct care workers;
6. Work with other national organizations to develop an advocacy agenda that is comprehensive and build support from all key constituencies to address the workforce crisis, not by piece meal, but with comprehensive and innovative models;
7. Support the development of national career ladders and/credentialing programs that build the direct care worker into a respectable and attractive profession so that millions more will want to be Direct care workers and viewed in the way many look upon firefighters as a noble profession, that not long ago was seen as negligible as that of the direct care worker today.
I ask you to join with us and work together to ensure that elders contemplating retirement and needing services and supports do not struggle on their own to find workers that are qualified and well trained to provide the much-needed care that they need.
Join with us so that the thousands of direct care workers working in thousands of homes and institutions, from the east coast to the west coast (including Alaska and Hawaii, receive the respect they deserve.
