The Screw just keeps on tightening, Home Health Care
My Aunt lives at home following a stroke and uses home care aids rather than being in a nursing home. I live with her and I take about 2 hours, with a lot of equimpent, a day for what I do for her and she gets another 3.5 hrs when someone else helps her and does the heavy stuff because I am disabled also.
There has been first drastic cuts by the state for pay for agencies and caregivers followed by changes that were supposed to stop fraud and abuse but were so onerous that there is no profit in the traditional care scheme. We work for a non-profit but in order for them to survive they had to slash the salaries of their managers so they left and the 3 of 4 people were replaced in Septermber. Since then two of them have left and been replaced along with the Scheduler. We have two long term PCA's who help us and due to cancer and heart trouble, pregnancy, then flu we needed someone else. I started asking for help right after Thanksgiving. I got no replies to my inquires. When we had nobody but me for 7 days I finally got upset and went looking for answers. That is when I found out about the missing managers.
Today we called a new agency that opened less than a mile from us and talked to the owner who filled us in that all for profit agencies are switching from PCA's and Home Health Aids to Certified Nursing Assistants and Companion Care. They are not covered under the new rules and also They are not covered by the brand new Union that was voted in last year
Our two PCAs can be hired by the new agencies both have had the formal classroom training, can review online and only need to take the test ($205) but I need the classroom training $700-900 plus the test. That would be three months pay for me. Sometimes agencies will pay for it but I am only going to be working for my Aunt they cannot afford to foot the bill for me. I get that. I am involved in rehab and really do not have time to train at this time.
I may be retiring from paid work a lot sooner than I thought and I am sure that this two tiered system was known by the Legislature and the big money who are setting up Home Health Care agencies like McDonalds.but not publically discussed. If I had not gotten this information from this Agency owner My Aunt would be out of care and we could be out of jobs without notice and right now it takes the state 60-90 to process each PCA signing up with a new agency and you cannot work until that it done. It takes 6 weeks to process her switch to another agency.
Right now people are forced into other occupations and Seniors are left with nobody to care for them. Nursing homes and assisted living services are also full up because we looked into that in case our PCA's never came back two weeks ago.
I hate to say it but the local Unionization plan has been checkmated and that game is over. There is no going back.
