 |
|
|
July 06, 2007
|
In This Issue:
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
Researchers Examine how Caregivers Cope with Racial Abuse
In a follow-up to a 2001 article on race relations and caregiving relationships, authors Celia Berdes and John Eckert examine one aspect of caregivers' response to racism on the job, looking at how the emotional relationships aides form with residents allow them to counter some of the effects of racial abuse.
The 2001 article found that, although three-fourths of nursing assistants had experienced racial abuse on the job, many tended to disqualify the experiences as something other than racism. "The Language of Caring: Nurse's Aides' Use of Family Metaphors Conveys Affective Care" looks at one reason why--the emotional and affective relationships aides have with residents.
Click here for the rest of the story.
|
|
 |
|
Recent additions
Click here for more news from the Clearinghouse.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
Ask What Your Country Can Do for You
Have you ever wanted to ask the presidential candidates what they would do to improve health care for health care workers? Now's your chance. YouTube, the popular video website, is offering anyone with access to a video camera, webcam, or phone camera a chance to submit a question for a series of presidential debates it is co-hosting with CNN.
Click here for details.
Montana Paper Explains Significance of Health Care Victory
A feature article in the June 23 issue of The Missoulian explains the significance of a new law in Montana, under which Medicaid will pay home care providers more so they can provide health care insurance for their employees. "What they were able to do in Montana is such a great example of what can be done on a statewide basis," the article quotes HCHCW National Campaign Manager Allison Wagner as saying.
Click here for the rest of the story.
New York Legislature Passes Bill to Cover Personal Care Workers
In a major victory for home care workers in New York State, a new law extends state-sponsored insurance coverage to thousands of home attendants and home health aides. The Governor signed A5919B/S.6344 on July 4, and it will go into effect April 1, 2008.
Click here for the rest of the story.
Michael Moore Wants to Make You Sicko
There's one good thing about the bad state of our health care coverage: A lot of people are talking about it. States are passing laws aimed at increasing coverage, and all the presidential candidates are talking about health care reform. Some candidates are even rolling out proposals for covering the uninsured. And if that's not enough to start a healthy debate, filmmaker Michael Moore (Roger and Me, Fahrenheit 9/11) just cranked up the volume with an exposé on the sorry state of health care in the U.S.
Click here for the rest of the story.
|
|
 |
|
More Information
Click here to read more from and about the HCHCW campaign.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
 |
SEIU Creates New Health Care Union
The Service Employees International Union has created a new health care union, SEIU Healthcare. The organization, which has a $100 million organizing budget, is headed by Dennis Rivera, the longtime leader of New York's 1199/SEIU. The new group's federal agenda includes providing health care coverage to more children, setting minimum staffing guidelines, and increasing training and education for health care workers.
The Cost of Family Caregiving
The contributions of family caregivers have an estimated economic value of $350 billion a year, according to Valuing the Invaluable: A New Look at the Economic Value of Family Caregiving. The 12-page AARP Public Policy Institute issue brief found that nearly one-fifth of all U.S. workers are caregivers, and that the productivity losses to U.S. businesses associated with caregiving are estimated to be as high as $33 billion a year. The study underscores the need for better government and private sector options for long-term care.
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Dear Friend,
If some people are fashion-conscious, I guess you'd have to call me fashion-unconscious, but this issue's New from Health Care for Health Care Workers box includes evidence of the kind of trend that gets me excited: Over the last month or so, two states have voted to extend health care to thousands of home care workers.
Both Montana and New York are covering many -- though not all -- of the workers in their states who are currently uninsured or in danger of becoming uninsured very shortly. And both states are doing it by increasing their reimbursement to providers and requiring that the extra funds be spent on health insurance coverage for employees.
iPhone, schmiPhone. Now this is a bandwagon worth hopping onto.
|
|
|
|
 |
IOM Committee Hears What It Takes to Retain Direct-Care Workers
"The eldercare field, to a very large degree, now knows how to recruit and retain paraprofessional workers," Steven L. Dawson, president of the Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute, told the Institute of Medicine (IOM) Committee on the Future Health Care Workforce for Older Americans. "There is no mystery here: If tomorrow we paid these individuals a livable income, offered them health insurance, trained them better, supervised and supported them--listened to them--we would solve this unnecessary 'workforce crisis' in a matter of months."
So why the shortage of the home health aides, certified nurse aides, and personal care attendants who provide at least 80 percent of our paid long-term care services? The problem, says Dawson, is that we're used to seeking out "best practices," when what is needed is systems change.
Click here for the rest of the story.
|
 |
|
Violations of Labor Law Plague Home Care and Home Health, Report Finds
"The systematic violation of our country's core employment and labor laws - what we call "unregulated work" - is threatening to become a way of doing business for unscrupulous employers," says Unregulated Work in the Global City, a report from the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law - and a lot of those violations are happening in home care.
The report looks into eight broad categories of workplace violations taking place in New York City. It identifies seven common violations in the home care field, noting "gray market" workers, who are hired directly by the people they assist, are the most vulnerable.
Home care attendants are not eligible for minimum wage or overtime. In addition, the report finds, agencies often make illegal deductions, requiring workers to "pay off" training by working additional time or collecting kick-backs for good assignments or additional hours. Other violations by employers include not allotting time for meal breaks, not paying employer taxes, failing to observe OSHA-mandated health and safety precautions, and not offering workers' compensation coverage. And finally, workers in the gray market are often exempt from the right to organize.
|
|
|
US DOL Awards Workforce Development Grants
The U.S. Department of Labor has awarded $3 million in three-year grants to six organizations to prepare workers for careers in long-term care.
Click here for details.
|
|
|
CMS Issues Progress Report on Grantees
Updates on the progress of the 2006 Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services' National Direct Service Worker (DSW) Resource Center grantees outline 10 successful strategies for recruiting and retaining direct service workers.
Among the initiatives described are:
Recruitment and training of people with disabilities and people 55 and older to work as DSWs in Arkansas;
A realistic "job preview" video made in Delaware;
An effective candidate screening tool in Kentucky; and
Initiatives to increase the number of workers with health coverage in participating home health agencies in Maine.
|
|
|
Consistent Assignment Called Key to Excellence
"There is nothing particularly complex or magical about consistent assignment. The key is in allowing caring relationships between staff and patients to develop and flourish over time," write David Farrell and Barbara Frank in "A Keystone For Excellence," an article about consistent assignment in the July issue of Provider magazine.
Noting that consistent assignment is the eighth goal in the Advancing Excellence in America's Nursing Homes campaign, the authors say: "it may well be the linchpin for the entire initiative."
|
|
|
New York Coalition Offers Advice on Strengthening the Direct-Care Workforce
When it comes to delivering quality care, "well-trained and empowered formal caregivers are key to the process because they ... encourage practical decision-making when implementing on-going service plans and often know the consumer best," says Developing a New and Better Long Term Care System in NY State. "We can support and further the impact of these workers, and improve the system as a whole."
To do so, the Long Term Care Community Coalition white paper recommends that the state develop and maintain workforce capacity and improve training.
The strategies it recommends to develop workforce capacity include collecting data to help boost retention rates, encouraging better screening by employers, and encouraging older adults to join the workforce. It also recommends rewarding providers who can demonstrate that they retain workers, increasing wages and benefits, encouraging better training for supervisors, and helping workers transition between long-term care settings, among other things.
To improve training, it recommends that the state develop training on consumer-directed care, encourage improvements in other areas of direct-care worker education, and encourage the use of telemedicine to "aid and complement workers, not replace them."
|
|
|
Rhode Island Senate Bans Mandatory Overtime
A bill passed last month by Rhode Island's senate bans overtime for nurses and certified nursing assistants except in unforeseeable emergencies.
"For more than a decade, the issue of nurses and nurse aides being forced to work overtime has been a perennial complaint at the General Assembly," according to an article in the June 20 Providence Journal, "Nurses asserted that patient safety was compromised when caregivers were forced to work exhausted. Hospital lobbyists countered that they rarely used mandatory overtime, and only as a last resort."
The June 19 vote, which called for a ban on overtime except in emergencies such as a power outage, a spike in the patient population or when an unusual number of employees call in sick, "drew a thunderclap of applause," according to the paper.
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
August 10, 2007
Is a Caring Society Possible? Mobilizing for Social Change, New York, NY
August 1-3, 2007
Pioneer Network 2007 Conference, Philadelphia, PA
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
