Posted by Elise Nakhnikian on February 16th, 2010 at 6:47 pm | No Comments »
Melanie Shouse
A group of Pennsylvanians is marching the 135 miles from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C., over the next week. They are going to call on Congress to support health care reform, and they want you to join them.
It may be a little late to join the march from start to finish, since it starts on February 17, but the leaders of Melanie’s March are also looking for people to join them at events along the way in cities like Newark, Wilmington, and Baltimore; donate to support the cause; or march the last mile with them to Capitol Hill. Continue reading »
Posted by Elise Nakhnikian on December 21st, 2009 at 10:33 pm | No Comments »
Charles Wesley Mumbere
A political refugee from Uganda who worked for years as a nursing assistant in Maryland and Pennsylvania has gone back home to take his place as king of the Rwenzururu Kingdom. According to an Associated Press article about Charles Wesley Mumbere, “The new King of Uganda’s Mountains of the Moon has undergone many transformations — from teenage leader of a rebel force to impoverished student to a nursing home assistant working two jobs in the U.S., where he lived for nearly 25 years.”
Mumbere grew up in the bush with a rebel group led by his father, a deposed king who was leading his Bakonzo people in protest against their oppression by the Toro Kingdom. After his father’s death, Mumbere came to the United States to study, gained political asylum, and trained as a nurse’s aide.
He chose the work, he told the paper, because it was reliable. “Other jobs you can be laid off easily.” But surviving on a nursing assistant’s salary wasn’t easy. “Sometimes you have two jobs,” he said. “You go to college in the morning, between 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. Then you go prepare to go to work at 3 p.m. and then return at 11 p.m.”
Under a new arrangement with the Ugandan government, the exiled king was reinstated. He has no executive power, but he may determine cultural and social issues affecting his people.
Posted by Elise Nakhnikian on September 9th, 2009 at 11:43 am | No Comments »
Glenwood High-Rise
A case study from the DSW Resource Center outlines a model for recruiting people in public housing buildings as personal care attendants.
Work Where You Live (PDF) describes a program in the Glenwood High-Rise, a 154-unit, mixed-population building in Annapolis. Eligible residents were both elders and younger adults with disabilities.
“Finding workers to provide services in congregate housing can be particularly challenging due to the stigma associated with public housing,” the case study notes. “Many individuals with disabilities prefer to directly hire and manage their own workers, but they often cannot afford to do so, and public funding is not always available.” The Annapolis program solved that problem while offering employment to public housing residents. Continue reading »
Posted by Elise Nakhnikian on September 9th, 2009 at 11:17 am | No Comments »
As every direct care worker advocate knows, personal and home care aides earn far too little for the important work they do. And now an updated version of PHI’s State Chart Book on Wages for Personal and Home Care Aides (PDF) gives advocates a valuable tool, proving that real wages are actually getting worse.
The chart book analyzes data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, adjusting last year’s wages for inflation to see how their earning power compares to average wages in 1999.
Nationwide, these inflation-adjusted rates, which the chartbook calls “real wages,” have decreased by 3 percent over the past nine years, dropping from $7.50 an hour to just $7.31. Real wages increased in more than half the states during that period, but not enough to make up for their decline in the other 21.
Median wages in 2008 ranged from $7.05 an hour in Texas to $12.55 in Alaska in 2008, or real wages of $5.61 to $9.90. “Wages for personal and home care aides are so low,” says PHI Director of Policy Research Dorie Seavey, “that about 20 percent of these workers received a raise on July 24 when the minimum wage increased to $7.25/hour.”
The chartbook also compares wages to federal poverty level wages for a one-person household.
Elise Nakhnikian
Communications Director
Direct Care Alliance
Posted by Elise Nakhnikian on June 25th, 2009 at 10:56 am | No Comments »
A full set of DCA Direct Care Fact Sheets, one for each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia, is now available in the Resources section of our website.
The one-page sheets were created as a resource for direct care worker advocates and their allies, legislators, policymakers, members of the media, and others interested in direct care issues. They include key facts such as:
- The number of home health aides, nursing assistants, and personal and home care aides in the state in 2006 and the projected numbers of each in 2016
- The average hourly wage for the state’s direct care workers
- What percentage of direct care workers in that state or region are without health insurance
Elise Nakhnikian
Communications Director
Direct Care Alliance
