Press Release (pdf)

November 7, 2007 – Edwin Méndez-Santiago, Commissioner of the New York City Department for the Aging, has named PHI as one of two winners of the 2007 Commissioner’s Award for Innovation.

PHI is a Bronx-based nonprofit that works to ensure high-quality, cost-effective services for long-term care consumers by helping create quality jobs for direct-care workers. It develops innovative recruitment, training, supervision, and client-centered caregiving practices. It also advocates for the public policies needed to support those practices and staffs the National Clearinghouse on the Direct Care Workforce, a national on-line library of news, research, best practices, and other information to solve the direct-care staffing crisis in long-term care.

The commissioner is recognizing PHI for its work on behalf of direct-care workers who assist older New York City residents in their own homes. PHI sponsors Pathways to Independence, a New York City home care service and training network that includes:

• The SKILL Center, which uses learner-centered teaching principles to train more than 500 low-income residents a year to become home health aides;
• Independence Care System (ICS), the only partially capitated Medicaid managed-care plan in the state for people with physical disabilities, which currently serves 1,200 people; and
• Cooperative Home Care Associates (CHCA), an 1,100-worker, employee-owned home care agency in the South Bronx. CHCA is the first worker-owned home care agency ever established in the United States, and the nation’s largest worker cooperative of any kind.

PHI traces its roots back to CHCA, from which it became independent in 1992. As a nonprofit, PHI was charged with spreading the “quality care through quality jobs” principles that underlie CHCA’s business model. That model includes comprehensive training for new workers, which doubles the federally mandated 75 hours, and a supportive environment that emphasizes on-the-job training, coaching, and access to public services to allow workers to overcome obstacles to steady employment. It also includes career ladder opportunities for home health aides, who may graduate to positions as peer mentors, assistant instructors, assistant coordinators, or coordinators.

“When I’m talking to home health aides, I bring in a lot of my experience as an aide,” says Denise Clark, a CHCA coordinator who started there in 1992. “Sharing stories helps people open up to you. They trust you, they start to come to you. You knock down barriers and they stay longer.”

“They blossom like a flower,” agrees peer mentor Joann Poue, who started at CHCA 19 years ago, also as an aide. “When they start work here, the rose is closed up. The minute they find out that you worked in the field, the rose starts opening up.”

The Commissioner’s Award for Innovation is presented annually to recognize exceptional work in caregiver research, program development or service by an individual or organization. Previous honorees include United Hospital Fund, Cobble Hill Health Center, and Isabella Geriatric Center. This year’s other winner is Con Edison, which was recognized for its commitment to its employees’ caregiving needs.

PHI’s award will be presented to PHI President Steven L. Dawson by Commissioner Méndez-Santiago on Wednesday, November 7, in conjunction with the 23rd Annual Mayoral Conference on Alzheimer’s Disease, the largest municipal conference of its kind in the country.

“We thank Commissioner Méndez-Santiago for this award and for his leadership,” says Dawson. “We accept this honor on behalf of the direct-care workers throughout the city. We particularly thank the home health aides from CHCA.

“Without their dedication, skill, attention, and compassion, New Yorkers with Alzheimer’s and other chronic illnesses or disabilities and their families would face a very bleak future.”