Archive for ‘Direct care consumers’

What Caring for Friends Taught Me About Direct Care Workers

Posted by on January 31st, 2012 at 10:41 am | 1 Comment »

Meriam Jawhar

As an advocate for people with disabilities, I’ve always realized that they need certain supports. But becoming a caregiver for two of my friends gave me a whole new awareness of just how much professional caregivers really do, and the huge responsibility they have for another person’s life.

The first time I was put into the role of caregiver was in 2007. A close friend of mine, my compadre and my son’s godfather, had to go in for heart surgery. He was 78 and not very healthy physically, but mentally he was fine. He went into the hospital one way and 48 hours late he came out another: he had dementia as a result of the surgery.

Being the advocate that I am, I got him on a disabled and elderly waiver within six weeks. That provided 35 hours of home health attendant care, but I had to do the weekends and split overnights with some other friends of mine. I did that for eight months.  Continue reading »

What We Know About Each Other

Posted by on January 24th, 2012 at 10:39 am | No Comments »

David Moreau

Toby won’t go in the auditorium

for the noonday concert

so Ellie takes Donnie and Melinda

while Toby and I wait in the hallway.

When you’re ready, I tell him,

as calmly as I can because I

really want to hear the Schubert concerto.

Toby sits cross-legged on the floor,

rocking contentedly

and we hear the piano softly

on the other side of the wall.  Continue reading »

DCA to Build on Momentum in 2012

Posted by on January 3rd, 2012 at 1:41 pm | 2 Comments »

DCA Board Chair Tracy Dudzinski

Dear Friends,

Thanks to the hard work of our direct care worker leaders and allies, we made a lot of progress in 2011, and there are many opportunities for continued success in 2012.

As DCA’s board chair, I am incredibly proud of the leadership and vision of DCA’s executive director, Leonila Vega, as well as DCA’s staff, members, volunteers, and allies. 2011 was a year of many milestones for the direct care workforce and the Direct Care Alliance, and I’d like to share some of the highlights with you. They only scratch the surface of what we accomplished in 2011, but they’re proof that our movement is growing stronger and direct care workers’ voices are being heard. I also want to tell you about some of the things we have planned for 2012.

The most exciting developments in 2011 were the responses we got from both the U.S. Department of Labor and Congress to the persistent advocacy of DCA and its allies to extend basic labor protections to home care workers. Just last month, DOL proposed a rule that would extend minimum wage and overtime protections to home care workers. And earlier last year, the Direct Care Job Quality Improvement Act was introduced by Senator Casey (PA) in the Senate and Representative Sánchez (CA) in the House. Continue reading »

Home Care Agency Owner Finds Caregiver Training Invaluable

Posted by on December 12th, 2011 at 11:34 pm | No Comments »

Bob Hebert

My wife and I own a non-medical home care agency that provides assistance with activities of daily living. Our clients are all private-pay, and our direct care workers are all caregivers or companions, not certified CNAs or home health aides.

Those caregivers are our business. Young or old, they have to have a passion and a heart for this kind of work. But they also have to be managed and supported and trained.

We offer our caregivers a lot of training, and we find they really appreciate the classes. Arizona is one of 23 states that do not have licensure requirements for home care. There is no federal training requirement for home care workers, and no state requirement either in our state, except a new one that just applies to people who work at agencies that serve Medicare or Medicaid recipients. But of course all home care workers need training, so most companies do it themselves. Continue reading »

Judge Temporarily Blocks 20% Pay Cut for Family Caregivers

Posted by on December 6th, 2011 at 10:58 am | No Comments »

As home health agency owner Tim Plant explained in a September 20 DCA blog post, Minnesota’s new budget included a 20 percent pay cut for personal care assistants who provide care to a relative. The cut was to have gone into effect October 1, but a dedicated group of activists worked hard to convince lawmakers and Department of Human Services administrative staff that it should not be enacted. The activists succeeded in getting the cut tabled, but more action is needed to ensure that it is permanently defeated, as Vice President Brigette Menger-Anderson of the Direct Support Professional Association of Minnesota (DSPAM) explains in  DSPAM’s newsletter. See below for the beginning of her article and a link to the rest.

In the last newsletter, we provided you with a legislative update, focusing on the unprecedented 20% rate cut for providers who were billing for PCA services provided by caregivers of family members. This statute deeply impacted the disability and DSP community immediately. Many providers reduced the wages of their workers to compensate for the reduction. Some DSPs recently blogged on the DCA that they are now down to $7.75 an hour and can’t even afford the gas to get to provide the supports that are needed. DSPs wrote into DSPAMs Facebook page and shared that they live in small rural towns and feel that it is unlikely to get someone else to fill these shifts and that the providers are banking on the genuine caring and giving nature of DSPs to continue to do their jobs.

What we need for our legislators and the general public to understand is that direct support workers are provided a service that is the least costly and offers the most opportunity for dignity and independence to the individuals who receive direct care services. Read the rest in the Winter 2011 I Am DSPAM newsletter, starting at the top of the 11th page.

Protecting the Social Safety Net

Posted by on November 8th, 2011 at 10:32 am | 1 Comment »

CNA and DCA member Kelly Gessner testifying at a Senate briefing last week.

UPDATE: Help us fight to preserve these crucial programs by emailing your elected representatives. Our action alert makes it easy to send them a letter.

Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are under attack. Over the past several months, these social safety programs have become the focus of a political battle over what our government needs to do to create jobs and stimulate our struggling economy. This is alarming because these programs are fundamental to the already shaky economic security of our seniors, people with disabilities, and low-income families—a group that includes many direct care workers and their families, as well as most of the people they assist.

Unfortunately, the debate about whether to cut social safety net programs is being driven by politics, not the realities that millions of low-income families and individuals face every day. The Direct Care Alliance and many of our allies are waging campaigns to preserve these crucial programs. Continue reading »

Demonizing Caregivers No Way to Reduce Elder Abuse, says DCA Issue Brief

Posted by on October 25th, 2011 at 3:37 am | 1 Comment »

“The personal, often intimate nature of caregiving relationships can make it difficult to define, detect, and deter the abuse of elders and people with disabilities by the caregivers they rely on. Nonetheless, there are a number of steps that employers and policymakers can take to support good care and prevent abuse,” says No Excuse for Abuse, the ninth in a series of Direct Care Alliance policy briefs.

Arguing that we cannot reduce abuse until we understand its root causes, the nine-page issue brief looks at what we know—and what we don’t know—about how and why care recipients get abused by their caregivers. Author Elise Nakhnikian notes that the great majority of abuse appears to be committed not by paid professionals but by informal caregivers, usually close family members, and that it is often caused by “complex and stressful dynamics between caregiver and care recipient, with one party’s actions and attitudes affecting the other and creating a ‘reactive pattern or feedback loop.’”

Simply blaming and punishing those who abuse will not solve the problem, she writes. In fact, demonizing caregivers can make things worse, pushing the issue even further underground and tarnishing the reputation of an honorable profession. Continue reading »

Minnesota Personal Care Assistants Face 20% Pay Cut

Posted by on September 20th, 2011 at 12:36 am | 6 Comments »

Tim Plant

We Minnesotans used to be full of pride for our prudent government and our tradition of fairness and equality for all citizens. Minnesota is the home state of “Happy Warrior” Hubert Humphrey, a former vice president of the United States and a lifelong champion of civil rights.  But our proud state is becoming a national embarrassment, and some of our personal care assistants are about to pay a heavy price for our political dysfunction.

Most of you have probably heard about our failure to pass a state budget by the due date of June 30, which led to a state government shutdown for several weeks earlier this summer. When Governor Mark Dayton reconvened the legislature for a special session, it was conducted behind closed doors. The secretly approved budget that finally emerged includes dramatically fewer resources to help our most vulnerable citizens because the “no tax increase for millionaires’’ philosophy ruled the day. Continue reading »

Getting Past Our Preconceptions About the Oldest Old

Posted by on August 29th, 2011 at 6:00 pm | 8 Comments »

The nurse came into the hospital room, still scanning my mother’s chart. He was radiating the manic cheeriness that nearly every other member of the staff had aimed at her since we got there, a fake friendliness I’d grown to hate. I could practically see the data he’d just processed scrolling behind his eyes: 90 years old, female, atrial fibrillation and atrial flutter, here for a pacemaker.

“Do you mind if I call you Jean?” he bellowed.

“No, not if I can call you by your first name,” she said. “But if you want me to call me by your last name, then I want you to call me by mine.”

“Okay, fine,” he shouted. “Do you know what you’re here for, Jean?” Continue reading »

Elders, Community Organizations & Disability Leaders in Wisconsin Fight Cap on Home Care Funding

Posted by on July 25th, 2011 at 1:29 pm | No Comments »

The following letter was sent to U.S. Secretary of HHS, Kathleen Sebelius by the Survival Coalition of Wisconsin Disability Organizations.

The Survival Coalition of Wisconsin Disability Organizations is writing to join various other organizations and elected officials in asking you to deny Wisconsin Department of Health Services Secretary Dennis Smith’s anticipated request to eliminate the entitlement feature of Wisconsin’s Family Care Waiver. As you know, the current agreement in effect between CMS and Wisconsin includes the following language:

“Every eligible person will have entitlement to Family Care within 36 months of implementation of the Family Care Waiver in his or her county. Every person with a nursing home level of care will have the choice of receiving the Family Care (or in some parts of the state Partnership) benefit by enrolling in a managed care organization or to choose Medicaid fee-for-service benefits including participation in IRIS, Wisconsin’s self-directed supports waiver, if desired.” Read full letter to Secretary Sebelius.

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