Archive for ‘workloads’

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 »

An Honest Day’s Work Deserves Fair Pay

Posted by on January 29th, 2012 at 11:48 am | 4 Comments »

A home care workers explains why we need to enact the proposed home care rule

Mohan Varghese

It is only just to give home health care workers the basic rights that are guaranteed by the Fair Labor Standards Act.  If you look at any other job that’s non-salaried, they have those rights. If you work at a fast food place flipping burgers, you’re getting all those requirements met, but if you are providing home care you don’t.

I have worked three-plus years at a nursing home as a certified nurse aide and three years as a home health aide caring for a spinal cord injury patient. I do all the things in home care that I did in the nursing home and more. Some of the extras are simple tasks like cleaning and cooking. Others are much complex medical tasks that were done by licensed nurses in the nursing home, like urinary catheterization and administration of shots and other medications. Continue reading »

Celebrating Dr. King’s Legacy

Posted by on January 17th, 2012 at 10:42 am | No Comments »

As Martin Luther King. Jr. Day approached, we here at the Direct Care Alliance found ourselves reflecting on Dr. King’s influence on our lives and work and wondering what he would think about today’s campaign for better jobs for direct care workers. We asked some of our current and past board members to share their thoughts about that.

Here’s what they had to say:

Economic justice for today’s version of “the help”

Almost 50 years ago, when Dr. King went to the Washington Mall with hundreds of thousands of people, there were thousands of domestic workers in the crowd. The domestic worker of the 1950s and ‘60s could be compared to the home care worker of today. They did the cooking and cleaning. They cared for the babies. They cared for the owners of the house when they became sick. And most of them—about 99 percent of them in the South—were African American.

These workers were so closely involved with the lives of the families they worked for that they weren’t even called workers. They were called “the help.” They didn’t get a salary. They just took whatever the owner of the house decided they deserved for the time they worked—and they worked from sunup to sundown. That same way of thinking led to the so-called “companionship exemption” that denies us home care workers the right to Fair Labor Standards Act protections.

Continue reading »

New DCA Resources Make It Easy to Comment on Proposed Rule

Posted by on January 10th, 2012 at 1:50 pm | No Comments »

By proposing to grant home care workers basic labor rights, the Department of Labor (DOL) has taken an important step to correct the longstanding injustice done to these crucial workers. Now it’s up to us to make sure that happens, by registering our support for DOL’s proposed rule to extend Fair Labor Standards Act protections to home care workers.

The comments DOL receives will be a major factor in its decision whether or not to enact the proposed rule, so it’s important that they hear from as many supporters as possible. To help you submit your comment, DCA has prepared new resources that guide you through process step by step.

Please visit the Take Action box on our Respect for Home Care Workers page and add your voice to the growing chorus. Tell DOL to do the right thing for home care workers and the people who rely on them!

The public comment period ends on February 27.

Life Without Overtime: Averaging 60 to 80 Hours a Week

Posted by on November 29th, 2011 at 10:32 am | 1 Comment »

Home care worker Evelyn Coke (pictured) fought for the right to overtime pay.

The home care worker whose story you are about to read chose to remain anonymous for fear of losing her job.

In order for me to pull my weight, I average 120 to 160 hours every two weeks. My husband loads trucks 40 hours a week. It takes me almost twice as long to earn what he does. I can work in two weeks what some people work in an entire month, because we home care aides don’t get paid time and a half for overtime in Florida.

A couple days a week, I work from 8 in the morning until 8 at night. Sometimes I work from 8 at night until 3 in the afternoon. I spend a lot of my days just going from one client to another from early morning to late at night.

These days I’m not driving too far between clients, but there were times when I was traveling 30 to 50 miles a day to get from one client to the next. We used to get paid for that travel time and mileage, but now we don’t, and gas costs a lot more now than it used to. Continue reading »

Life Without Overtime: Was I Living? Was I Really Taking Care of Anybody?

Posted by on November 1st, 2011 at 3:45 pm | 7 Comments »

Home care worker Evelyn Coke (pictured) fought for the right to overtime pay.

The home care worker whose story you are about to read chose to remain anonymous for fear of losing her job.

Here in Florida, when you work for an agency you don’t get time and a half for overtime. Most of the agencies will give you all the time in the world—and you have to take it, if you’re not getting overtime and you’re only making $8.25 an hour. You need to book the hours; you don’t have much choice. The only time I’ve gotten time and a half is on a holiday, and that’s because they’re in a bind and that’s the only way they could get someone to cover it.

I made $8.25 when I first started and worked my way up to $9 an hour. After taxes, that comes to $7.50 an hour, for everything I’m doing. I never got any overtime when I worked for agencies, so I had to work 7 days a week, 12 hours a day, just to get by. I was bringing home $750 a week [before taxes], but was I living? Was I really taking care of anyone? 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 »

Working for Less than Minimum Wage

Posted by on October 18th, 2011 at 9:02 am | 6 Comments »

Clara Glenn

I’ve been doing home care work for 30-some years, and I love it. I tell everybody I wouldn’t trade it for the world. You have to have a heart to do this work. You can’t just do it for no reason. You have to be dedicated. I always put God first in my life, and that carries me through.

About 15 years ago, I worked for a home care agency that paid less than minimum wage. The minimum was $5.15 at the time, and we were making $4.90. I think that was a reason a lot of the girls left. We stayed as long as we could and then we went on to other places.

I stayed because of the clients. I liked them and they liked me. We made our own little family, and that meant more to me than the money. As long as they were getting good care, that was really what mattered to me. Even now, some of their grandchildren send me Christmas cards and birthday cards and when they get married they call me up. They were like family, and I knew they needed help. Continue reading »

Ringing in 2011: Inspiring Yourself and Each Other

Posted by on January 5th, 2011 at 3:35 pm | 3 Comments »

Tina Tilley

A few years ago, I was offered a position at another company.  I had to make a decision whether to stay with my current job or to take the leap and accept the new position I was being offered.  From the outside, it was pretty much a no-brainer.  The new position was offering much better pay, better hours, and better benefits.  As much as I loved my job, I felt like I had to take the new position.

So I made that horrible drive to my work to put in my two weeks notice.  I told my manager, who in turn called her boss, who then asked to speak to me on the phone.  This was one of those moments I can point to in my life where I can honestly say, “That moment changed everything.”

Her words were few, but they had lasting impact.  She told me that she believed in me.  She told me that she knew what a hard worker I was, she saw the love and care I had for our residents, and she believed I could go anywhere I wanted to in the company if I just hung in there for a while.  I thanked her, and we hung up.

I put my two weeks notice in writing and handed it to my manager.  On the drive home, I called her and asked her to hold onto it for a while before she turned it into HR.  The next morning, I called and asked her to rip it up.

The truth is, I was looking for a reason to stay.  I had grown to love my residents like family and my job meant more to me than just the money.  But I needed to know that I was a valued asset to the company.

In the less than two years since those events transpired, I was made Assistant Manager of that particular home, and then this past September I was asked to manage a brand new home my company was opening.  None of which would’ve happened without the positive reinforcement instilled in me by a well-respected supervisor.

Making the transition from regular staff to management has been both eye-opening and exciting.  I now have the opportunity to instill the principles of positive reinforcement into my own staff and to listen to them as they tell me of their past experiences.  Between this and also the many responses I have received from my letter to the editor (which can be found here:  http://blog.directcarealliance.org/2010/10/3099/ ) the general consensus amongst Direct Care Workers is that most feel unappreciated, under-valued, and easily replaceable by their superiors.  Could this be a contributing factor to the outrageous statistic that 11% of those employed in caretaking roles are diagnosed with major depression?  (source:  http://www.cbsnews.com/2300-204_162-10005838-2.html?tag=page;next )  That is the highest amongst any other career choice!

How sad that in a profession that is all about caring for those who cannot care for themselves, the caretakers feel uncared for.  Whether it be by the State, by the company we work for, by the people we serve and their families, or by our co-workers, it is imperative that we appreciate and understand one another.

As we head into this new year, why don’t we make a New Year’s resolution to stay positive about the extremely important work that we do?

Here are a few things to try to help lighten your load in the coming year:

1)  Laugh -  Laugh a LOT.  In our profession, seeing humor in the strangest of situations is essential to the well-being of our mental health Continue reading »

Direct Care Workers, Employers & Allies Caring Across New Mexico

Posted by on November 22nd, 2010 at 11:43 am | No Comments »

It has been another exciting year for the New Mexico Direct Caregivers Coalition! On November 5, we hosted the second annual statewide summit, Caring Across New Mexico.  We were thrilled to have so many employers and vendors in attendance along with direct care workers – it was an example of how important it is for everyone to work together.  To kick off the morning, DCA’s Leonila Vega delivered a keynote address on national healthcare policy and what is being done to improve working conditions for direct care workers and the quality of care for elders and people living with disabilities. Watch a video of her presentation, below:

Next, we had an amazing panel of service providers discuss the importance of training, respect and recognition, and better working conditions for direct care workers.  These employers demonstrated an extreme commitment to their staffs and the people they serve. Continue reading »

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