'This will be catastrophic': Maine faces elder boom, worker shortage in preview of nation's future

[Zorro]

Janet Flaherty got an alarming call last October from the agency tasked with coordinating in-home care for her 82-year-old mother. It could no longer send her mom’s home caretaker. It knew of no other aides who could care for her mother, either.

Flaherty’s mother, Caroline, has for two years qualified for in-home care paid for by the state’s Medicaid program. But the agency could not find someone to hire amid a severe shortage of workers that has crippled facilities for seniors across the state.

With private help now bid up to $50 an hour, Janet and her two sisters have been forced to do what millions of families in a rapidly aging America have done: take up second, unpaid jobs caring full time for their mother.

“We do not know what to do. We do not know where to go. We are in such dire need of help,” said Flaherty, an insurance saleswoman.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/this-will-be-catastrophic-maine-families-face-elder-boom-worker-shortage-in-preview-of-nations-future/2019/08/14/7cecafc6-bec1-11e9-b873-63ace636af08_story.html

[dawg day]

1. Know what helps with this, Maine?

Immigration. Younger immigrants work, spend, raise children... good for the country.

[Zorro]

2. Great point

I recently visited my mother in an assisted care facility in the South, and about half the workers were non-native born.

[NBachers]

3. Yes, I had the same thought while reading this.

[SharonAnn]

5. My 92 yr old aunt has just had the second of her live-in caretakers deported.

She's private pay, money isn't an issue. She needs a little help,laundry cooking, occasional help with ADL (but not much). She wants to stay in her home and at this time can do so. She loved both of these women and is distraught about what's happening to them and terrified that she can't get the help she needs.

What good does it do to deport these women who were working, providing a benefit to society, and leave an elderly woman without the help she needs.

And one of them has been held for several months awaiting deportation. Costing us $, preventing her from working at a job where she's sorely needed.

[dawg day]

7. That must be traumatic for her also.

And for the two caretakers! The kinds of virtues and skills needed for home health aides are kindness and competence and patience, and often driving ability and physical strength-- but above all, caring.

I'm sorry this happened. I wish we could be more sensible about this and realize that we need workers beyond the native-born.

A lot of this, btw, like Trump's contempt for the idea of providing immigrants with help while they get adjusted to living and working here, shows a real disdain for the working class, manual labor, and women's carework-- all of which are essential but low-paid, and often the jobs are filled by immigrants.

And often those immigrants do good work all the rest of their lives, and raise children who are true and valuable Americans.

[eShirl]

6. Yes we know.

[lagomorph777]

4. Maine's previous Governor (LePrick) probably drove out a lot of young people and immigrants.

Oops.