Marilyn Daniel (R) helps Classie Morant prepare for her sister's funeral. Ms. Daniel had helped Ms. Morant care for her sister.
“Marilyn Daniel’s Reward,” the cover story of Sunday’s Washington Post Magazine, gives readers an up close and personal view of one compassionate home health aide and her work.
Author Paula Span makes clear the skills and sensitivity that make Marilyn Daniel good at her work, as well as the many services she provides. Span also interviews some of Daniel’s clients, her employer, and a variety of experts and advocates to answer the central question posed in the story’s subhed: “She works long hours for low wages as a home health aide — a job so demanding and underappreciated that others leave in droves. So why hasn’t she?”
DCA Executive Director Leonila Vega amplifies that question with her quote: “You can be a home care worker for 20 or 30 years and never receive a meaningful wage increase, never get a promotion. You could become an expert in working with people with physical disabilities or Alzheimer’s; yet you never receive any recognition for your increased learning and experience.”
Span, who has a book on the subject coming out next month, notes that “finding reliable, compassionate caregivers to help keep seniors in their homes isn’t easy, even in these miserable economic times,” in part because of poor pay and benefits. But her detailed and insightful portrait also makes it clear why caring people like Daniel find home care work so rewarding.
To voice your support for home care workers like Marilyn Daniel, take a moment to visit the DCA’s Legislative Action Center and ask U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis to include them in the Fair Labor Standards Act.
Elise Nakhnikian
Communications Director
Direct Care Alliance
Our elderly population is in need of services, goods and more participation of interested individuals in our communities and government offices, to create a consciousness of the lack of care, programs and benefits that would ensure aging with dignity. It is a SHAME that our grandparents go hungry, and their names are placed on “Wait list” for hot or frozen meals. A meal that would ensure their survival, to say the least.
I think President Obama, should visit in person any AAA or participate in raising funds for all MOW programs. We Americans feed the hunger everywhere, except for our aging population. The service quality that is highlighted in this story is certainly commendable. In my opinion salaries should be increased for all caregivers in home health aide programs.
Direct care workers are working for below-subsistence-level salaries. Economic need drives them more often than interest or compassion for the frail clients they serve. Horror stories are quickly published if there’s a hint of theft or physical abuse of their charges. Nothing much is published about their lives diminished by desperate poverty.
Recent legal immigrants may be taking care of our loved ones because few second-generation Americans would chose to perform elderly and/or dementia care chores on an ongoing basis, never mind the lack of raises or promotions.
The worst part of the job is the lack of respect direct care workers receive from the other “professionals” that work for the same entity. We don’t see social workers advocating for direct care workers. Nowadays social workers are being trained to become “psychotherapists,” not advocates for the poor and downtrodden. So who will speak for the well-being of the direct care worker?
Their only hope is to train for other jobs and get out of their profession. Where does that leave us? Where does that leave your bed-bound mother or grandfather? Are we, employed in our chosen profession and receiving middle class salaries, ready to quit our sweet-smelling jobs and take on their care?
For our own benefit we should do everything in our power to recognize their dedication and to establish wage scales that will reflect their expertise at doing jobs that few would do, if it wasn’t for lack of any other way to survive, financially.
It would be interesting to study the disparity between the salaries and benefits accorded the CEOs of nursing homes and/or home health agencies and the salaries and lack of benefits offered to the direct care workers.
It is the same story for Direct Care Workers who work with the developmentally disabled. 13 hour shifts are the norm to simply earn a living wage. There are people in this agency who have worked here for 5+ years and have not been given a raise. If you are a compassionate person and this sort of work is deeply spiritually fulfilling then by all means work 80 hour weeks. A career? Horrible choice. The only chance is to somehow make it to upper management.