Over the last several weeks, direct-care workers have received attention in the press.

Newsday Op-Ed

Newsday published an op-ed (pdf) co-written by PHI President Steven Dawson and Direct Care Alliance Executive Director Leonila Vega to pay tribute to the “American heroine” Evelyn Coke on the one-year anniversary of her death.

Coke, a home care worker, fought the Fair Labor Standards Act‘s “companionship exemption.”

“In honor of Coke and the millions of home care workers nationwide, Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis should immediately provide all home care workers with the minimum wage and overtime protections promised to American workers under the Fair Labor Standards Act,” wrote Dawson and Vega.

New York Times Blog Posts

The New York Times reports in its New Old Age Blog on the relationship between quality care in nursing homes and high turnover of nurses’ aides.

Reporter Dale Russakoff shares her personal experience with finding a nursing home for her mother 10 years ago. She writes that what has changed since then is that “the federal government and the states have all identified the turnover rate as a crisis in long-term care.”

PHI Director of Curriculum and Workforce Development Peggy Powell confirms Russakoff’s observations and is quoted as saying, “Cycling in aides who don’t know you is very disorienting and upsetting, and the resident is the one who suffers on the quality end.”

In another New York Times blog post, Nancy Folbre, an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, argues for creating more jobs by providing increased federal support for home care services and cites two reports to make her case.

More Media Coverage

More news on the direct-care workforce, including a letter (pdf) to the editor published in the Boston Globe on how Massachusetts health care reform left direct-care workers behind, can be found at the PHI Newsroom.

– by Deane Beebe