“Most of the people that get into this work are women, and they have kids,” says Patti Green of her fellow direct-care workers. “A lot of them are single. They need to earn a decent hourly rate of pay, and they need to have health insurance.”
“That would attract more people, and then if they had […]

“There has been a lot of paternalism about direct-care staff – the notion that they are not really adults,” says Anna Ortigara. “People wonder: Are they really capable of being in a lead role? Can they be trusted to make good decisions? Are they capable of self-direction?”
Instead of these questions, Ortigara believes, we should ask […]

“I’ve seen a tremendous change in the view of direct-care workers,” says researcher Barbara J. Bowers. “I don’t think you’ll find a lot of people in long-term care any more who say ‘They’re lazy, they’re incompetent, they don’t know anything.’ I think there’s a tremendous amount of respect.
“The trouble is, managers think it’s their job […]

”There needs to be a real shift in terms of the values of our society, in how we regard the people who give this care,” says Constance L. (Connie) Coogle, Ph.D., of our nation’s direct-care workers. ”How do you get a whole society to have a revolutionary change of values?”
”I think maybe you do it […]

”In a way, the whole long-term care system is upside down,” says Celia Berdes, PhD, a gerontologist and sociologist at Northwestern University and director of research at Presbyterian Homes in Evanston, Illinois. ”The things that are the most important are the least valued, and the things that are the least important are the most valued.”
”All […]