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The Family Caregiver Alliance (FCA) and National Center on Caregiving honored PHI Massachusetts with its “2010 Best Advocacy Award” for sponsoring Come Care with Me Days.

PHI’s Come Care with Me Days give elected officials the opportunity to learn firsthand about direct-care workers’ jobs by shadowing an aide at work. In addition, the participants gain a better understanding of the critical need to build an adequate, stable, and skilled direct-care workforce.

“Thank you for your excellent example of working with elected officials to understand the important work undertaken by the nation’s home care workers,” wrote Kathleen Kelly, the executive director of the FCA. “We hope this experience will remain with them as they make budget and programmatic decisions affecting home care workers, patients, and family caregivers.”

Bill Filed to Assess if Massachusetts Is Prepared to Care

Throughout an afternoon in September 2010, Massachusetts State Representative Kate Hogan, co-chair of the Elder Caucus, worked alongside a home health aide who provides critical supports three times a week to her homebound client.

One week later, Massachusetts State Senator Pat Jehlen, Senate Chair of the Committee on Elder Affairs, joined a homemaker/personal care attendant on her weekly visit to the home of her 102-year-old client.

Just months after participating in a Come Care with Me Day, Jehlen filed a bill to establish a task force to determine Massachusetts’ preparedness for the CLASS Plan. The task force would be charged with collecting and examining the state’s direct-care workforce data, and assessing the Commonwealth’s infrastructure for supporting efficient long-term services and supports and mechanisms to ensure quality care.

A hearing on the bill (SB45) will be held in the fall.

“The Come Care with Me Days gave Senator Jehlen and Representative Hogan the opportunity to participate in direct-care work firsthand,” said PHI Massachusetts Director Amy Robins, who organized the events. “These legislators deserve a lot of credit for their interest in this workforce and their willingness to roll up their sleeves and actually do this work, which is physically and emotionally demanding.”

PHI has also sponsored Come Care with Me Days in Pennsylvania and Iowa since the advocacy campaign kicked off in 2009.

Come Care with Me Days are a project of PHI Health Care for Health Care Workers, which is made possible with support from the Nathan Cummings Foundation.

For more information on the campaign, contact PHI Director of Government Affairs Carol Regan.

An announcement [scroll down] about the eight other “2010 Best Of” award categories and recipients is available on the Alliance’s website.

– by Deane Beebe

Tatia Harris

The Greater Philadelphia Caucus of the International Caucus of Women of the African Diaspora (ICWAD) honored “African American Health Care Professionals” for the first time, at its 18th Chisholm Award Ceremony. Read the full story

Carol Rodat

PHI’s Carol Rodat has been recognized with a Social Impact Award from AARP New York.  The awards, given in honor of the AARP’s 50th anniversary, were received by 50 New Yorkers who have been champions of social change.

According to the AARP, award recipients:

“have demonstrated an exceptional commitment to enhancing the lives of New Yorkers, improving their communities, and inspiring others in the areas of financial security, health care, livable communities, images of aging, giving back, arts and entertainment, and learning.”

As New York policy director for PHI, Rodat is responsible for strategic advocacy, research, and analysis on behalf of the state’s direct-care workers and long-term care consumers, improving the health care delivery system by emphasizing the policy and practice learning derived from PHI and its affiliates. She works closely with a variety of stakeholders in New York’s health care system, including consumers, workers and their representatives, and providers.

Rodat has over 20 years of policy experience, having worked first in the field of child welfare policy for the Child Welfare League of America in Washington, D. C., and then as executive director of Hospital Trustees of New York State, where she initiated one of the first quality improvement projects in the state’s hospitals. She was also a contributing editor to Health System Leader, which studied the development of integrated health systems.

Most recently Rodat served as president of the Home Care Association of New York State, a statewide not-for-profit organization active in state and federal home care policy.

Tameshia Bridges, PHI’s Michigan senior workforce advocate, has been chosen to join a selective national network of policy and advocacy leaders.

The Progressive Leadership and Advocacy Network (PLAN) is for “emerging advocacy leaders working to effect positive change for low-income women and their families.” It helps participants become more effective advocates by strengthening their leadership and advocacy skills, in-depth policy knowledge, and networks of connection in the field. It is run by the National Women’s Law Center.

Read the full story

November 20, 2007 – PHI President Steven L. Dawson is the recipient of the 2007 Cindy Marano Trailblazer Award for Innovative Leadership in Sector Workforce Development. The award was presented to Dawson on November 14 by the National Network of Sector Partners, on behalf of his work at PHI.

The Trailblazer Award for Innovative Leadership is given in recognition of innovation and excellence in industry-specific workforce strategies that bridge the needs of employers and workers. A national committee of his peers – senior practitioners of sector workforce development – chose Dawson for the honor.

“It’s possible that there may have been, eventually, a sectoral workforce development field without Steve Dawson—but I doubt it would ever have been taken nearly as seriously as it is today,” says Andy Van Kleunen, the executive director of The Workforce Alliance. “Steve was among very few folks who, over a decade ago, challenged the workforce field to think not only about training workers, but also about changing jobs and industries for the benefit of both employees and employers. That wasn’t just a slogan for Steve. He knew the amount of work it would require for a sectoral initiative to demonstrate its true value as an expert within an industry. But Steve and his PHI colleagues didn’t shy away from the challenge, and the direct-care industry—workers, clients, and firms—is the better because of it. It’s the gold standard of the sectoral field.”

Also this fall, Dawson co-authored a book in collaboration with three colleagues from the Aspen Institute in the field of sectoral employment development. Sectoral Strategies for Low-Income Workers: Lessons from the field describes how sectoral programs are helping workers, regional economies, and businesses become more competitive.

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.”