PHI PolicyWorks has released an updated State Chart Book on Wages for Personal and Home Care Aides (pdf). The chart book tracks wages in all 50 states and the District of Columbia for the period 1999-2008. It shows that nationally, the median real wage (adjusted for inflation) for personal and home care aides has decreased by 3 percent over nine years, from $7.50 to $7.31.

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PRESS RELEASE
For immediate release
July 6, 2009

Contact: Alex Olins
PHI Northern New England Director
Phone: (802) 655-4615
Email: aolins@PHInational.org

Rewarding Skill and Improving Care
New initiative provides career advancement opportunities for direct-care workers in Vermont

Burlington, VT — Few issues are more important to people today than health care. Both from a personal and societal perspective, Americans are deeply concerned about what the future holds for them when it comes to health care. In many states, the growing needs of an aging “baby boomer” generation are creating an enormous shortage in qualified direct-care workers, who provide most of the “hands on” home and community-based care that elders and people living with disabilities depend upon. Read the full story

by Jill Tabbutt-Henry, PHI Curriculum Manager

“I thought it was great!”

“Wonderful sessions, flowed well. I felt very supported in my learning…”

“Appreciated the plain-speaking, direct approach.”

These enthusiastic comments come from a group of staff educators and administrators from home care agencies, disabilities support organizations, and a community college in western Pennsylvania who recently spent three days learning how to use the adult learner-centered approach to provide entry-level training for direct-care workers. Read the full story

Recommendations for Establishing a Credentialing System for Iowa’s Direct Care Workforce, (pdf) a recent publication from the Iowa Direct Care Worker Task Force, is a useful tool for advocates in any state who want to create “an accessible, comprehensible, flexible, quality system of education and training for all direct care workers.”

The report documents work to be done to implement recommendations published by the task force in December 2006.  Work began on the project last month.

Iowa’s proposed three-tiered credentialing system is intended to ensure that all direct-care workers are adequately prepared for the job. It also aims to make workers’ duties and qualifications clear to the consumers and family members who hire them, to acknowledge their special skills, and to correct the inequities of the current system, which requires training in some settings but not in others even when the same set of services is delivered in both.

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In response to a recent solicitation for comments from the federal government, PHI recommended changes to the three main categories used to track direct-care workers at the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The government considers revisions to its Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) categories every ten years.

PHI also asked the government to address the exclusion of direct-care workers who are “independent providers” from federal/state employer surveys, which PHI believes results in a serious undercount of workers counted as Personal and Home Care Aides. Independent providers refer to direct-care workers who are either self-employed or who are directly employed by consumer households.  

Workforce data can play a critical role in assessing things like the effectiveness of state initiatives to attract and retain greater numbers of direct-care workers, or the impact of policies designed to improve direct-care worker wages.

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Subscribe to the HCHCW newsletter

We’ve been covering news from our Health Care for Health Care Workers (HCHCW) campaign in PHI’s news stories and Quality Care/Quality Jobs newsletter ever since the campaign started years ago — and we’ll keep on covering the really big stories, since PHI’s beat is whatever affects the direct-care workforce.

But now HCHCW has launched its own free biweekly e-newsletter. The HCHCW newsletter drills deeper than anything else you’ll find into the shortage of affordable, quality health care coverage for direct-care workers. It analyzes the problem, explores solutions, describes the progress of the HCHCW campaign and its partner organizations, provides links to valuable resources, and more.

If you care about this crisis and want to keep up with the latest developments and strategies, you’ll want to add your name to their list.

Check out past issues

Elise Nakhnikian, Senior Online Editor
enakhnikian@phinational.org