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October 12, 2007
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In This Issue:
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Conflict with Staff Linked to Depression in Family Caregivers
Family caregivers of people in nursing homes who frequently disagree with the staff about whether or how staff are attending to the resident's needs are more likely to be depressed than those who feel that the staff are doing a good job, according to a study of relatives of residents of non-profit nursing homes in Central New York.
The Importance of Family Relationships With Nursing Facility Staff for Family Caregiver Burden and Depression found that family perceptions of staff supportiveness - the degree to which family members found staff to be easy to talk to, helpful, and understanding - have less of a relationship with depression than perceived caregiver conflict. Perhaps, the researchers hypothesize, "families are highly concerned about the residents' instrumental needs and therefore conflicts around the meeting of these needs are more salient than feelings of support."
Interventions designed to improve relationships between staff and family members may help alleviate family caregiver depression, the authors conclude.
The article, which was published in the September 2007, Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, is available free to subscribers only; others must pay to download it.
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Recent additions
Click here to see what's new in the Clearinghouse.
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HCHCW Staff and Supporters Speak up for Proposed Health Reform Plan
HCHCW staff and supporters spoke in favor of Governor Ed Rendell's proposed Prescription for Pennsylania in a recent rally and bus tour.
Tracy L. Lawless, Pennsylvania State Campaign Coordinator for the PHI HCHCW campaign, addressed the crowd at an October 2 rally in Harrisburg for the health reform plan. "Our legislators need to look closely at the growing "care gap" in Pennsylvania, and think ahead," she said. "We must begin attracting new workers to the field -- and retain existing workers -- if we are to ensure continuity of care for Pennsylvania's long-term care consumers. Providing health coverage to these workers is one critical way to help stabilize and grow this essential workforce, while also ensuring the quality of care for Pennsylvania consumers."
John Tague, vice chairman of the board of the Consumer Health Coalition, was quoted by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review in an October 10 article about a tour by the governor to promote his health plan. "A lot of this is a common-sense approach to keeping costs down," said Tague, a crusader from the disability community who spoke at HCHCW's legislative briefing earlier this year. "The biggest weakness is the perception that it's going to cost businesses a lot of money. I think, in the long run, it will save businesses money."
Iowans Urged to Support Quality Jobs
"Our hope is that the conversation that has been focused on how to pay for long-term-care services will expand into a conversation about the availability of long-term-care services. If it does not, we may be spending a great deal of time trying to find better ways to pay for services that won't exist," writes John Hale, policy director of the Iowa CareGivers Association (ICA), in the September 24 issue of the Des Moines Register.
In his opinion piece, Hale calls on Iowa residents to "work together on how to make jobs in long-term-care good jobs." The long-term care system may collapse, he warns, if workers are not paid better, offered retirement plans, and provided affordable health insurance.
The ICA is spearheading the PHI HCHCW campaign's efforts in Iowa.
Michigan Senate Passes MI-HEART Bills
The embattled Michigan First health insurance plan passed another hurdle on October 4 when the senate unanimously approved three bills to create the Michigan Health Ensure Affordable and Reliable Treatment (MI-HEART) exchange, which would facilitate implementation of the plan. Michigan First would ensure many of the state's one million-plus residents without insurance.
The Michigan House has yet to vote on the bills to create The MI-HEART exchange.
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More Information
Click here to read more from and about the HCHCW campaign.
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Dear Friend,
"Pennsylvania has become a key health care reform state," says Tracy Lawless, Pennsylvania State Campaign Coordinator for the PHI HCHCW campaign. "Now more than ever, direct-care workers and their employers have so many opportunities to become advocates to improve the health care coverage for this workforce."
Tracy spoke last week at a rally on behalf of Governor Ed Rendell's proposed health reform plan, telling the assembled crowd and those watching on TV about the hardships facing direct-care workers who don't have affordable health care coverage -- and the impact of that lack on the thousands of Pennsylvanians who depend on their services. For more on what she said, check out the lead story in this issue's New from Health Care for Health Care Workers section.
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A Celebration of Caregiving
If you wanted to give a visitor from Mars an idea of the rich variety of personalities, relationships, and emotions involved in giving and receiving care, A Celebration of Caregiving: Portraits & Stories would make an excellent start. An elegant coffee table book, it's a quick and affecting read, consisting mainly of 41 stories about a caregiver/care recipient duo or team. Each story gets just one page of text and a full-page photo, but the authors and photographers cover a lot of ground in that short space.
Published by IndependenceFirst, a center for independent living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, A Celebration of Caregiving highlights the work of both paid and unpaid caregivers "in the hope that the role of caregivers and the value of the work they perform will be better understood and appreciated by all," according to the foreword. It also includes a list of resources and three lists of rights and responsibilities: one for caregivers, one for home care consumers, and one for agencies.
To order, call 877-463-3778 or download the online form.
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Congress Introduces Coke "Fix"
Congress has introduced a bill to extend Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) protections to home care workers employed by agencies.
If passed, the Fair Home Health Care Act (S. 2061; H.R. 3582) would amend the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Long Island Care at Home v. Coke. The court ruled that home care aides who work for agencies and other ''third-party'' employers are not entitled to minimum wage and overtime protection under the FLSA.
The act would extend protection to all home care workers except those who work for individual families or consumers on a "casual" basis for less than 20 hours a week. "As America faces a shortage of qualified home care workers, this new legislation will help to meet Americans' growing demand for home-based health care by protecting those who provide it," says cosponsor Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) in a press release. "This is not only the fair thing to do, but it is the smart and necessary action we need to ensure that Americans have first-rate care."
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A Sectoral Solution
A new book from the Aspen Institute's Workforce Strategies Initiative describes how "sectoral employment development" programs are helping workers, regional economies, and businesses become more competitive by crafting solutions to systemic labor market issues within industries. Case studies in Sectoral Strategies for Low-Income Workers: Lessons from the field highlight dozens of innovative initiatives -- including the work being done by Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute, this newsletter's publisher, in the direct-care arena. The book also highlights key facets of a sectoral strategy.
The 100-page publication, which can be downloaded free of charge, is aimed primarily at workforce professionals, policy makers, and funders.
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Finding the Funding
A free online guide to finding funding for direct-care worker initiatives is available on the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) National Direct Service Workforce Resource Center.
Of use both to currently funded projects that need to sustain their activities and groups that want to fund new initiatives, it explores where and how to find funding. In addition to describing how current direct service workforce initiatives are funded and listing currently available funding, if any, it provides information about four kinds of grant-makers: federal, state, foundation, and other private funders.
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A Roundup of State Laws to Improve Home Care Wages and Benefits
A study published this summer by the Center for Personal Assistance Services (PAS Center) describes recent legislation state passed legislatures to improve wages and benefits for home care workers.
In State legislation regarding wages and benefits of home care workers: Thirteen promising practices ,
Alice Wong, H. Stephen Kaye and Robert Newcomer build on the work done by Dorie Seavey and Vera Salter last year in Paying for quality care: State and local strategies for improving wages and benefits for personal care assistants. Seven of the 13 bills or legislative appropriations Wong and her colleagues describe increased wages. The other six related to collective bargaining agreements or health insurance coverage. In addition to summarizing the 13, the report links to the text of each bill and describes legislation that state lawmakers considered but did not passed.
Promising though they may have been, few of the 13 dramatically increased wages or benefits, the authors note. "For example, Arkansas' Senate Bill 37 proposed to raise the hourly rate of Medicaid home care workers by 15 cents in 2003." What's more, not all of the wage pass-throughs that were voted in made it to the direct-care workers for which they were intended.
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Bill Offers CNAs a Leg Up on the Career Ladder
A bill introduced by Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) would provide scholarships to nursing assistants and other health care workers who want to become licensed nurses. S. 2064, the Nurse Training and Retention Act of 2007, aims to "address the projected shortage of nurses by funding comprehensive programs to create a career ladder to nursing (including Certified Nurse Assistants, Licensed Practical Nurses, Licensed Vocational Nurses, and Registered Nurses) for incumbent ancillary healthcare workers."
In an interview with CBS Chicago, CNA Norene Brown says the bill would "enable me to advance myself into the next level of nursing, without having to worry about how I'm going to pay for it."
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October 21-24, 2007
National Consumer Voice for Quality Long-Term Care 2007 Annual Meeting, Hilton Crystal City, VA
October 21-24, 2007
American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging (AAHSA) 2007 Annual Meeting & Exposition, Orlando, FA
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