Archive for ‘New Hampshire’

New Hampshire Analyzes the Needs of—and the Need for — Home Care Workers

Posted by on October 8th, 2009 at 12:35 pm | 2 Comments »
From Home Care Workers: Keeping Granite Staters in Their Homes as They Age.

From Home Care Workers: Keeping Granite Staters in Their Homes as They Age.

As Terry Lynch pointed out in his most recent blog post, the popular – and federally mandated – trend of using Medicaid to pay for less nursing home care and more home care cannot continue unless states can attract and keep more home care workers. A pair of recent papers from New Hampshire looks at just what that means for the state of New Hampshire.

In Home Care Workers: Keeping Granite Staters in Their Homes as They Age, (PDF) Kristin Smith of the University of New Hampshire’s Carsey Institute profiles home care workers. The 12-page policy brief provides a demographic and economic overview of the state’s licensed nursing assistants, personal care service providers, personal care assistants (PCA), and homemakers and companions. It also discusses the implication of low pay and high turnover among direct care workers for those who rely on their services. Continue reading »

Real Wages Keep Falling for Personal and Home Care Aides

Posted by on September 9th, 2009 at 11:17 am | 1 Comment »

state chartbook coverAs 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

DCA Publishes Fact Sheets for Direct Care Worker Advocates and their Allies

Posted by 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