PHInational.org

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

 Wages for personal and home care aides have never been high – and they’re getting lower nationwide. Between 1999 and 2006, real wages for these workers fell by 4 percent nationwide.

State Chart Book on Wages for Personal and Home Care Aides, 1999-2006, (pdf) a new PHI publication by Director of Policy Research Dorie Seavey, looks at the buying power of the wages earned by personal and home care aides between 1999 and 2006. It finds that their median wages nationwide increased by an average of just 2 percent a year while the rate of inflation grew faster, causing the 4 percent decline in real wages.

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Are rising gas prices making it harder for you to deliver or receive care? Add your comments at the end of this post. 

We all feel the pinch from high gas prices, but for home care workers it’s more of a punch. As PHI President Steven Dawson puts it: “The doubling of gas prices over the past few years has been like a pay cut for many home care workers — particularly those serving clients in rural areas.

“Policy makers like to believe that home care is cheaper than nursing homes, but that’s only true because home care workers are paid less than nursing home workers, often without health benefits,” adds Dawson. “There’s not much good to say about higher gas prices, except perhaps that they will now force policy makers to look more closely at the real costs of shifting toward home-based care, and in response create realistic reimbursement policies that will offer home care workers a true livable wage and benefits.”

When PHI’s Michigan State Director Hollis Turnham wrote about the home care gas crisis in our blog in June, talking about the problems she was already hearing about, anticipating others, and asking what other people were experiencing, the response was swift and impassioned. An employer called rising gas prices “the 500 lb gorilla in the room for home care agencies.” A home care worker talked about seeing turnover increase and “looking for something closer to home myself.” The head of a home care and hospice aide recruitment agency said he planned to do “something very tangible to address this issue,” though he wasn’t ready yet to say just what. 

Read the full story