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September 27, 2007
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In This Issue:
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HCHCW and Alzheimer's Association Host Talks about Health Care
The PHI Health Care for Health Care Workers (HCHCW) campaign and the Alzheimer's Association will join forces next month to host two candid conversations between direct-care workers and Alzheimer families. The workers and consumers, who may be joined by an employer as well, will share their experiences and call on the nation to support living wages and quality, affordable health care coverage for the direct-care workers who support millions of Alzheimer families.
The discussions will be held on October 17 in Concord, New Hampshire, and on October 18 in Columbia, South Carolina. Both are free and open to the public. For more information, please contact Allison Wagner, National Campaign Manager, HCHCW, at 202-526-3150 or awagner@paraprofessional.org.
Iowa Commissioners Hear about the Need for Affordable Health Care
"It is simply wrong that so many people who provide care for others do not get care themselves because they do not have any health insurance or because the insurance they do have fails to meet their needs," direct-care worker Kealy Andersen, a member of the Iowa CareGivers Association, told a group of special commissioners studying health care in Iowa. "The work we do is among the most important in society. We deserve good health coverage."
Click here for the rest of the story.
Wisconsin Fact Sheet Describes Benefits to DCWs of Proposed Health Plan
A fact sheet prepared by HCHCW for the Wisconsin Long Term Care Workforce Alliance explains how the proposed BadgerCare Plus program, which would cover many currently uninsured adults, would benefit direct-care workers -- and therefore improve the quality of care provided to elders and people with disabilities.
Click here for the rest of the story.
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More Information
Click here to read more from and about the HCHCW campaign.
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NIA Publishes Health Information in Spanish
Health information for seniors is now available online in Spanish from the National Institute on Aging. The website includes information on Alzheimer's, cancer, and diabetes, and other common diseases as well as tips on choosing a doctor and maintaining a healthy lifestyle, free publications, and links to other health-related, Spanish-language websites.
African-Americans More Likely than Whites to Receive Poor Nursing Home Care
African-Americans in metropolitan parts of the United States are more likely than whites to live in poor-quality nursing homes, according to a study in the September/October issue of Health Affairs. The researchers found that blacks were nearly three times as likely as whites to be located in a nursing home housing predominantly Medicaid residents and nearly twice as likely as whites to be located in a nursing home that was subsequently terminated from Medicare and Medicaid participation because of poor quality. African-Americans are also more likely to live in a greatly understaffed nursing home.
Private Investor Ownership of Nursing Homes Linked to Low Staffing, Poor Care
"At Many Homes, More Profit and Less Nursing," an investigative feature story in the September 23 New York Times, examined the rise in private investor ownership of nursing home chains and the subsequent decline in average nurse staffing levels -- and care quality. The story focuses on licensed nurses and doesn't mention CNAs, but it does stress the link between caregiving staff levels and care quality and how that relationship can be jeopardized when people with their eyes trained on making a profit take over a long-term care organization. It also explains how private investors often structure the deals when they're buying nursing homes, creating complicated economic structures to make it all but impossible to figure out who's actually responsible for delivering care.
Upstate New York Faces Coming Elder Care Challenge
An analysis of demographic data for upstate New York concludes that a rapidly growing number of frail and disabled elderly will be needing assistance in the coming years, especially in the inner cities and older suburbs. "The challenge may prove especially difficult for many upstate communities, given their environment of slow economic growth and fiscal stress," says The Demand for Local Services and Infrastructure Created by an Aging Population.
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What are the three main "common-sense" things that can be done to solve the direct-care worker shortage, according to Josh Wiener?
Correct Answers:
Improve wages and benefits
Change the structure of long-term care organizations
Provide additional training and career ladders
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Dear Friend,
For this issue, Celia Berdes, a researcher who specializes in the field of aging, wanted to share her thoughts on Dancing with Rose, a book by a journalist who spent a few weeks as a direct-care worker. Berdes says the book is unusually nuanced and accurate in its depiction of residents' and nursing assistants' lives, and she ought to know: Her own studies of the racism often faced by direct-care workers and how they cope with it are unusually insightful, perhaps because she once did direct-care work herself.
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Author Balances the Personal with the Public in Writing about Direct-Care Work
In this piece, Celia Berdes, PhD, a researcher specializing in issues affecting the elderly and direct-care workers in long-term care, reviews Dancing With Rose, a book by journalist Lauren Kessler. The book describes the lives of a group of people living in a dementia care facility.
Berdes says Kessler "balances the personal with the public," treating the nursing home "not as a building but as a stage on which various players each provide, in their turn, a key to the story of what happens there." Noting the author's sensitivity in writing about the home's nursing assistants, Berdes writes: "Dancing with Rose leads us to this inescapable conclusion: that caring aptitudes and attitudes of skilled direct-care workers are the most important components of high-quality care."
Click here to read her review.
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Brief Urges Better Supports, Working Conditions for Immigrant Workers
A 12-page issue brief on the aging of America recommends improving working conditions and hiring more immigrant workers to solve the direct-care gap.
"Immigration and the Elderly: Foreign-Born Workers in Long-Term Care" notes that immigrants already provide an increasing percentage of the direct-care workforce, with more than 5 percent of all foreign-born women working as caregivers, compared to 3 percent of native-born women.
The August 2007 paper, which was published by the Immigration Policy Center of the American Immigration Law Foundation, outlines three models for the training, placement, and promotion of immigrant workers: The International Institute of Minnesota in St. Paul, the Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute, and the 1199 SEIU Employment and Training Center. It also makes recommendations for future research and policy reform.
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ALFA Rejects Staffing Standards
A major national trade association for assisted living organizations has gone on record against staffing standards for the industry.
In ALFA Core Principles, the Assisted Living Federation of America opposes "regulations mandating one size fits all staff to resident ratios." Instead, the group calls for the managers of each assisted living community to determine how many employees are needed "to adequately meet the needs and preferences of the resident population."
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Making the Case for Improving Low-Income Jobs
Federal requirements that improve substandard jobs help employers that want to provide quality jobs, "creating a more level playing field, so that they are not always undercut by companies that take the most brutal, cost-cutting approach," says Opportunity at Work: Improving Job Quality.
The 24-page paper, the first report published by the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) job quality initiative, argues that improving job quality is critical to reducing poverty, supporting families, rewarding effort, and expanding opportunity for all in the U.S. The report, which cites the nine elements of a quality direct-care job developed by PHI as an example of an industry-specific way of measuring job quality, also makes the business case for upgrading jobs.
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October 02, 2007
Florida Association of Nurse Assistants (FLANA) 12th Annual Convention, Haines City, FL
October 06, 2007 - October 10, 2007
The National Association for Home Care & Hospice (NAHC) 26th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO
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