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Karen Kulp

Karen Kulp, president and CEO, Home Care Associates, and PHI board member, explains that paying home care workers minimum wage and overtime is fair and smart.

I recently had the honor of traveling to Washington, D.C., to stand with President Barack Obama, Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis, and home care workers from across the country, as the President announced the proposed regulations to ensure that home care workers have minimum wage and overtime protections under the Fair Labor Standards Act.

The new regulations amend a law that dates back to 1974, which exempted employers from paying minimum wages and overtime for “casual babysitters” and “companions for the aged and infirm.”

Pennsylvania is one of 21 states (along with Washington, D.C.) that require employers to pay minimum wage, and among 16 of these states that also mandate paying overtime. This leaves 29 states — and nearly 1.4 million workers — without these basic labor protections.

I was asked to go the Washington in my role as president of Home Care Associates in Philadelphia, which has been in business since 1993. We have over 175 workers who provide services to people in their homes and other settings.

Kulp (L) with President Obama

We believe that that providing quality care requires creating a quality job. A quality job means providing appropriate training as well as decent wages and benefits. This not only makes sense because it is the right thing to do — we believe it is the smart thing to do.

Our experience is that in the long run, paying decent wages leads to greater investment by workers resulting in lower turnover rates and better quality of care.

More people are seeking home care for themselves or loved ones. Today there is greater competition to provide those services — from franchise businesses, providers who offer minimum wages but no benefits, and independent home care workers who are hired directly by consumers or their families for their services.

Home Care Associates has a workforce that is experienced and committed to doing this incredibly challenging and important work. It takes a special kind of person to do this work day in and out. Workers stay when their work is respected and adequately rewarded. At our company our aides average over four years on the job, which benefits the individuals for whom we care.

As a nation, it is time for us to recognize the valuable role that home care workers play in caring for our loved ones. Many of us would not be able to work to support our own families without the assistance of a home health aide.

The success of our company is proof that you can have a successful business and still pay workers decent wages and provide them with benefits. The need for quality workers will only increase in coming years. That is why we support these proposed regulations to assure that workers across the country receive fair pay for the critical services they provide.

Henry Schemper

A guest commentary by Henry Schemper, program director at the Arizona Direct Care Worker Association.

Arizona’s annual conference for direct-care workers was certainly “A Celebration of Caring.”

Our opening speaker, MaryAnne Sohloss, set the tone for our daylong event by beautifully elaborating on “The Endless Gift: Honoring the Caregiver.”

The session topics were wide-ranging and addressed subjects such as empowering the direct-care worker, wound care, and bed rest. Other sessions covered the experience of growing older as well as conflict resolution and making legislative change for professional direct-care workers.

Just in case anyone felt a bit fatigued at the noon luncheon, LaTanya Sheffield, a former Olympic hurdler, pumped up the room in her unique way by speaking of “Hurdling to New Heights.” Sheffield held the room in rapt attention by energetically pointing out the similarities between jumping hurdles in the Olympics and confronting the obstacles we all face as direct-care workers.

Shirley Maki

Prizes awarded

Prizes were given to many at both the raffle and the luncheon. The award for longevity as a direct-care worker was warmly received by Shirley Maki (left) of Sabino Care Center. The lively 82-year-old has worked in the profession for nearly 44 years.

Finally, the 2010 Professional Direct-Care Worker of the Year award went to Mary Kay Madrid of La Colina in Tucson.

Attendants respond

Positive comments abounded for the annual conference, co-hosted by the Arizona Direct Care Worker Association and the Arizona Gerontological Nurse Association.

“The response was great!” said Susie Burkholder of Carondelet Hospice, who sent a dozen workers to the conference. “Everyone enjoyed the day. I was thrilled to send all twelve of them. They are a team-oriented group and enjoy having time together without me. What a grand group of personalities in the twelve. Much laughter, I am sure.”

We will be meeting with many attendees as well as those who sponsored them and paid their way. Our goal is to make the 2011 conference as good or better. Suggestions and comments can be sent directly to henryschemper@gmail.com.

Thanks to all who gave their time and energy to honoring and celebrating Arizona’s direct-care workers.

Hank Schemper, Program Director
Arizona Direct Care Worker Association

Jack Mills

A guest column by Jack Mills, Executive Director of the National Network of Sector Partners (NNSP), an initiative of the Insight Center for Community Economic Development.

NNSP released a brief last week that provides important lessons for health care providers and direct-care workers. From Hidden Costs to High Returns: Unlocking the Potential of the Lower-Wage Workforce (pdf) reports on the experience of dozens of health care organizations and manufacturing companies.

These employers have found that investments in lower-wage workers directly benefit their bottom lines while their workers move up to better jobs. The brief documents the benefits for employers and provides lessons to help other employers follow suit.

Companies highlighted in the brief include the Visiting Nurse Association of Eastern Massachusetts (VNAEM), which employs 160 people at its home care agency and two assisted living facilities for low- and moderate-income seniors and individuals with disabilities.

Aides Should Get the Pay and Respect They Deserve

As VNAEM CEO Linda Cornell points out, aides are low on the organization’s wage ladder, but they are “the people who have the most responsibility in our organization for the direct hands-on care that our patients and residents receive.” Their performance on the job consequently has a huge effect on service quality and customer satisfaction.

VNAEM’s goal is for every patient and resident to be treated as you would want your loved ones treated, and its ultimate goal is to have everyone in the association recognize and embrace direct-care workers as equal members of the care team. Their approach was that certified aides and nurses’ aides should receive high-quality training, and the pay and respect that they deserve.

Funding from the Commonwealth Corporation‘s Extended Care Career Ladder Initiative (ECCLI) supported VNAEM’s early work toward its goals with B&F Consulting in 2004-2005. Over the next two years, VNAEM teamed up with other health care employers and a nonprofit workforce organization, called Employment Resources, Inc. (ERI), to form a collective recruitment and training program for entry-level aides.

Ms. Cornell and her staff had long felt that the standard training required for certified aides and nurses’ aides was too rudimentary to ensure the quality of care that the association wanted to be known for. “In the industry,” she says, “the training did not match what we need…. It was just a bare minimum, no real hands-on training.”

Industry-Focused Workforce Development

Fortunately, ERI was working on an approach to the broader, industry-wide change that Ms. Cornell had in mind. With an ECCLI grant, ERI designed a program specifically tailored for employers who — collectively — hired lots of aides every year. Since so many participated, the program could recruit widely, train large numbers of people, greatly improve the kind of training each candidate received, and yet keep the cost per worker low for each employer.

How the Program Worked

• The program took place at the participating companies’ facilities, so trainees received an immediate, firsthand experience of the working environment.
• A one-on-one assessment of each worker and assessments of supervisors’ and managers’ needs were performed at the outset.
• The employers paid 100 percent of their employees’ salaries while they were being trained.
• The training included various kinds of adult basic education and English as a Second Language, depending on the needs.
• The program paid for transportation and child care when needed.
• Employees who completed each stage of the curriculum got an immediate boost in wages.
• Wages rose from $10 to as much as $16 per hour for completing the full regimen.
• Graduates have become equal members of care teams.
• Several graduates have become Team Leaders and several others have become nurses.

The program also involved and trained supervisors and managers at every level to:

• ensure that the companies know how to get the best results from the newly trained workers;
• get every level to buy into culture change regarding how important all of the workers are at every level; and
• understand how they can better lead.

Given that the need for well-trained employees is common across the health sector, it was logical for ERI to reach out to a number of health care organizations in the region to form a program together. All of the employers worked together to design the training. ERI was at the “center of the wheel” in implementing the design. It brought together other organizations to deliver the services that employers and workers needed.

So-called “sector initiatives” like this one have been shown, in rigorous independent evaluations (pdf), to yield higher earnings and steadier work for participants with low incomes who also face multiple barriers. VNAEM and other employers that participate in sector initiatives receive major benefits too, as documented in other studies and as the brief describes in detail.

Funding for From Hidden Costs to High Returns: Unlocking the Potential of the Lower-Wage Workforce (pdf) was generously provided by the Hitachi Foundation.

Robyn Gershon

Robyn R. M. Gershon, MHS, DrPH, a professor of sociomedical sciences and associate dean at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, explores the occupational hazards faced by home care workers. Read the full story