The Direct Care Alliance is offering suggestions to President-Elect Obama for solving the direct-care crisis, while creating jobs to stimulate the economy.

The DCA, a decade-old nationwide and state-based alliance striving to improve the quality of care for consumers through the creation of higher quality jobs and working conditions for direct-care workers, has sent a letter to Obama (pdf) that includes the following suggestions:

• Increase the federal match for all home care and other community-based services funded under Medicaid to give states incentives to increase the services.
• Set a family sustaining hourly wage floor for direct-care workers who provide home care through the Medicaid program.
• Reverse the Bush Administration’s labor guidelines excluding home care workers from Fair Labor Standards Act minimum wage and overtime protection.

The alliance’s executive director, Leonila Vega, has requested a meeting with Obama’s staff to discuss solutions to the direct-care workforce crisis and policies to help move the care workforce into the middle class, citing the DCA’s  solutions as critical to delivering on the president-elect’s promise for a stable economy.