A protester of California's cuts to home care. (photo by Steve Rhodes)

California’s ongoing budget disaster edged nearer to some sort of resolution last week as state lawmakers approved a proposal to close the $25.3 billion gap through a package of 29 pieces of legislation.  The bills included spending cuts, revenue solutions, borrowing, and fund shifts. The state’s In-Home Supportive Services program (IHSS), long recognized as one of the most generous home care programs in the nation, lost $226 million in funding.

The IHSS budget cut is expected to remove 40,000 elderly people and individuals with disabilities — nearly 10 percent of all recipients – completely from the program, to cause 85,000 more recipients to lose domestic services (e.g., laundry, meal preparation, transportation to medical appointments), and to raise the monthly cost for care by as much as $200 for many others. Continue Reading

PRESS RELEASE
For Immediate Release
July 27, 2009

Contact: Karen Kahn
Director of Communications
KKahn@phinational.org
978-740-9844

PHI Establishes New National Policy/Advocacy Office in Washington DC

Receives $300,000 in joint funding from The SCAN Foundation and The Atlantic Philanthropies

Bronx, NY — PHI, a nonprofit working to strengthen eldercare and disability services in the United States, announces that it has opened a national policy/advocacy office in Washington, DC. The opening of the DC-based office caps a year in which the Bronx-based PHI has significantly increased its efforts to shape federal policy in support of a stable, well-trained direct-care workforce capable of supporting the growing demand for eldercare and disability services.

PHI played a key role in ensuring that the Institute of Medicine report, Retooling for an Aging America: Building the Health Care Workforce, addressed the needs of the direct-care workforce, and subsequently, was named co-convener, along with the American Geriatrics Society, of the Eldercare Workforce Alliance.

The new PHI office will leverage two distinct funding streams totaling $300,000—which will allow PHI to be a more powerful national advocate for direct-care workers than has previously been possible. The Atlantic Philanthropies, an international foundation which operates in the U.S., Australia, Bermuda, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, South Africa and Viet Nam, will exclusively support PHI staff’s legislative and regulatory advocacy work. The SCAN Foundation, a newly formed California-based foundation will fund PHI’s public education, policy development, and communication activities to improve care for elders.

“This new foundation support is a crucial step in positioning PHI to help policymakers make the critical connection between the quality of direct-care jobs and the quality of services for elders and people living with disabilities,” said Steven Edelstein, PHI’s National Policy Director.

Two senior PHI staff—Carol Regan and Allison Lee—will staff the office. Both have extensive experience in promoting innovative federal and state health care and workforce policies, most recently through PHI’s Health Care for Health Care Workers initiative.

“A stronger federal advocacy presence will better position PHI to influence emerging health, long-term care, and workforce policies, and ensure that our nation’s workforce of more than 3 million direct-care workers is recognized, rewarded, and made stronger, starting with ensuring them affordable health care.,” said Carol Regan, who will now serve as PHI’s Government Relations Director. “This is crucial to preparing America to care for the growing number of elders and people living with disabilities who depend on this workforce every day.”

PHI’s newly launched PolicyWorks website ( www.PHInational.org/policy ) will supplement these efforts by disseminating timely policy analysis, research, and advocacy opportunities to state and national allies. PHI National Policy Director Steven Edelstein, who manages PHI’s 14-person policy team, will oversee our federal policy work along with our continued work in the states.

An increased national focus on chronic disease management, integrated models of care, cost control, and health care workforce development as part of national health reform will provide opportunities to position the direct-care workforce within this key legislation. “For example,” Regan said, “we believe that the health care workforce development provisions now being discussed must include explicit reference to recruiting and training a quality direct-care workforce.”

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For more than 17 years, PHI ( www.PHInational.org ) has been on the forefront of practice and policy initiatives to improve the lives of people who need home and residential care, and the lives of the workers who provide it. In its work, PHI helps consumers, workers, employers, and policymakers improve eldercare/disability services by creating quality direct-care jobs. The goal of PHI is to ensure caring, stable relationships between consumers and workers, so that both may live with dignity, respect, and independence.

The Atlantic Philanthropies ( www.atlanticphilanthropies.org ) are dedicated to bringing about lasting changes in the lives of disadvantaged and vulnerable people. Atlantic focuses on four critical social problems: Ageing, Children & Youth, Population Health, and Reconciliation & Human Rights.

The SCAN Foundation ( www.thescanfoundation.org ) is an independent nonprofit foundation dedicated to advancing the development of a sustainable continuum of quality care for seniors that integrates medical treatment and human services in the settings most appropriate to their needs and with the greatest likelihood of a healthy, independent life. The SCAN Foundation supports programs that stimulate public engagement, develop realistic public policy and financing options, and disseminate promising care models and technologies.

A scene from the hearing.

Carol Rodat, PHI New York Policy Director, testified (pdf) in favor of the Together We Care Act of 2009 and the Earnings and Living Opportunities Act at a Congressional field hearing held in New York last week by the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity. Continue Reading

The Scan Foundation has released a policy brief titled Long-Term Care in Health Reform: Policy Options to Improve Both (pdf) that presents four distinct policy options for including long-term care support and services in health care reform.

The report comes on the heels of a SCAN foundation poll released in early July showing that nearly 80 percent of Americans would be more likely to support a health care reform package that includes improved coverage for long-term care services. Continue Reading

The U.S. Department of Labor has launched a $220 million competitive grant program aimed at training new workers for health care and other high-growth industries.

Funded with dollars from the Recovery Act and administered by DOL’s Employment and Training Administration (ETA), the program will provide grants for both public and private nonprofit entities in order to train individuals for careers in nursing, allied health, long-term care, and health information technology, as well as other high-growth industries based on regional needs.  Continue Reading

Congressman Dave Loebsack

An amendment to America’s Affordable Health Choices Act added in the House Education and Labor Committee would require:

• the development of recommendations for promoting and investing in the direct-care workforce
• the development of recommendations for assisting states with direct-care workforce plans
• the creation of a Personal Care Attendant Workforce Advisory Panel

In addition to other responsibilities, the advisory panel would be charged with developing core competencies for personal and home care aides as well as necessary training curricula and resources. Panel recommendations would then serve as the basis for a demonstration project in up to four states to test the effectiveness of the proposed training standards and curricula.

The amendment was introduced by Congressman Dave Loebsack (D-IA) and Congressman Jason Altmire (D-PA), at the encouragement of PHI and the Iowa CareGivers Association.

“Direct-care workers are at the frontline of health care,” said Congressman Loebsack. “They are the heroes who care for our elderly and disabled, and we must do everything we can to ensure that they have the training and resources they need so that we can continue to provide Iowans, and all Americans, with the quality health care they deserve.”

While some states have training requirements for personal and home care aides, there are no federal training standards for this segment of the workforce despite the fact that this occupation is among the second fastest-growing in the country.

The 2008 Institute of Medicine report, Retooling for an Aging America: Building the Health Care Workforce, garnered much public attention and included strong recommendations for creating training standards for personal and home care aides.