Holiday Toolkit

This Thanksgiving…

Help Bring Awareness to California’s Care Crisis and what your family and community can do to help

HELP BRING AWARENESS TO CALIFORNIA’S CARE CRISIS AND WHAT YOUR FAMILY AND COMMUNITY CAN DO TO HEL

For many of us, Thanksgiving is when we spend welcome time with friends and family. It is also a time when we are asked to think about what we’re thankful for. In a time when so many long term care workers are working hard to fight for dignity wages and benefits across the state and our aging population continues to boom while the supply in providers to care for them continues to diminish, it is important that everyone join the members of SEIU Local 2015 and those who receive long term care services in raising awareness for care issues and ultimately joining us in calling on state legislators and county board of supervisors for support.

In California, the number of individuals older than 65 is expected to increase from 5.2 million in 2015 to 9 million by 2030 . The California Employment Development Department projects that an additional 200,000 homecare workers will be needed by 2024. However, not all consumers who need homecare services currently receive them. If the homecare industry were expanded to cover all individuals who have a self-care limitation, California would need at least 600,000 and as many as 3.2 million additional workers by 2030. However, supply for this demand continues to shrink because median wages for homecare workers were $10.05 an hour in 2015, compared to $18.88 an hour for all workers in the state. Additionally, Homecare jobs provide few benefits. Only 40.7 percent of homecare workers in California have an employer-provided health plan compared to 69.4 percent of all workers. If the homecare system is unable to attract enough workers to meet growing demand, consumers will have to turn to more costly forms of long-term care.

But how can you help? There are plenty of concrete, tangible ways to have an impact right now — not just by ensuring your local leaders can lead with compassion when making decisions on funding for the In Home Supportive Services (IHSS) program and wages for those workers who participate in it but also by ensuring that we take this discussion into the community so that employers for private agency providers also understand that they must do more to ensure that workers in this industry are treated with the dignity and respect they deserve. We must ensure we can do more for our senior population who deserve care no matter what income level they belong to nor what zip code they live in and in order to do so we must be willing to demand California and our local leaders to treat home care workers as a necessary workforce.

Use this toolkit to support your conversations with friends and family this Thanksgiving. Let’s follow the lead of the long term care workers who first decided to organize and fight for better wages. Even when everyone said that – without a workplace – it would be virtually impossible, they did it while also taking on the task of fighting for quality senior care and disability rights for their recipients. Now it is our turn to give back and speak up for the vulnerable communities they care for as well as ensuring that the workers are treated with the respect that they deserve. Let’s work our hearts out to make sure all Californian’s understand the Care Crisis we are destined to face and what we can do to collaboratively work on solutions.

MENU

  1. Appetizers: Starting the Conversation
    What is the California Care Crisis and Why Does it Matter?
  2. Soup: Start Small Talk
    Homecare Supply and Demand
  3. Catch up with Family Near and Far: Continue the Conversation
    Homecare Job Quality & Wages
  4. Main Course: Call Into Action
    Homecare Cost Savings to the State
    Putting our Values into Action – Call Board of Supervisors and State Legislators
  5. Dessert: Spread the Love – Spread the Word!
    Tools for Immediate Action

1 Appetizers: Starting the Conversation ————————–

What is the California Care Crisis and Why Does it Matter?

  • In California, the number of individuals older than 65 is expected to increase from 5.2 million in 2015 to 9 million by 2030.
  • Not all consumers who need homecare services currently receive them. The California Employment Development Department projects that an additional 200,000 homecare workers will be needed by 2024.
  • If the homecare industry were expanded to cover all individuals who have a self-care limitation, California would need at least 600,000 and as many as 3.2 million additional workers by 2030.
  • Median wages for homecare workers were $10.05 an hour in 2015, compared to $18.88 an hour for all workers.
  • Median annual earnings for homecare workers are less than half of the median for all workers ($14,000 compared to $35,000).
  • Homecare workers are twice as likely to live in a low-income household as all workers (46.5 percent compared to 21.8 percent).
  • Homecare jobs provide few benefits. Only 40.7 percent of homecare workers in California have an employer-provided health plan compared to 69.4 percent of all workers.
  • The California Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates that annual turnover of IHSS workers is about 33 percent. That means that as many as 180,000 consumers must search for, hire, and train a new homecare provider each year.
  • Between 2013 and 2016, the median wage of personal care aides decreased by 2.3 percent, while the 10th percentile of wages in all occupations (a measure of the wages of other low-wage occupations) increased by 0.7 percent.
  • Researchers have documented that lack of sufficient care leads to negative health effects such as missing meals, dehydration, falls, burns, wetting or soiling clothes, and making a mistake in taking medication.
  • If the homecare system is unable to attract enough workers to meet growing demand, consumers will have to turn to more costly forms of long-term care.
  • The overwhelming majority of homecare workers are women, and 72.7 percent are workers of color, with Latinos comprising the largest race/ethnicity group. California’s homecare workers are also disproportionately foreign-born.

2 Soup: Start Small Talk ————————–

Homecare Supply and Demand

  • We are seeing a trend in long term care towards homecare, however, the demand for workers has outpaced the supply.
  • The proportion of people with a severe disability that would require hospitalization has been decreasing over time, while the proportion with a less severe disability that can have their needs met by a home health worker has increased.

HELP BRING AWARENESS TO CALIFORNIA’S CARE CRISIS AND WHAT YOUR FAMILY AND COMMUNITY CAN DO TO HELP

Family Home Care Providers

  • Sixty percent of IHSS home care workers are “family providers”, becoming a full or part time caregiver for a family member is a sacrifice that often times means leaving or reducing hours at a higher paying job. When caregiver wages are low, family income is reduced, making it more challenging for families to meet their financial needs.
  • By law, family care provider are not able to contribute to Social Security, so these workers have even less of a safety net.

3 Catch up with Family Near and Far: Continue the Conversation ———————–

Homecare Job Quality & Wages

Home Care Job Quality

  • Home care is extremely important work, allowing people with disabilities or chronic illnesses to stay in their community, maintain independence, and improve their quality of life. However, it can also be very challenging work.
  • If the quality of homecare jobs does not improve, it will be impossible to attract sufficient workers to meet future demand and people with disabilities and chronic illnesses won’t get the care they need.
  • Homecare work has traditionally not been valued or respected because of the some people’s view that it is not “real work” and because the majority of home care workers who do this work are women of color.

Home Care Wages

  • While many factors play into high turnover among home care workers, including burn out, lack of advancement opportunities, and insufficient training — the primary reason is that wages are too low to make ends meet.
  • A 2002 study by Howes found that an increase in wages for providers in San Francisco, along with health and dental benefits, led to a dramatic decrease in turnover from 60 percent in 1997 to 26 percent in 2002.
  • Home care worker wages have not kept up pace with the minimum wage increases, reducing or in some cases eliminating this historical premium. In most places in California, home care is now a minimum wage job.

4 Main Course: Call to Action ————————–

Homecare Cost Savings for the State

HELP BRING AWARENESS TO CALIFORNIA’S CARE CRISIS AND WHAT YOUR FAMILY AND COMMUNITY CAN DO TO HELP

  • In 2004 – 2005 survey, 19 percent of IHSS providers said that if they stopped caring for their consumer, the individual would likely end up in a nursing home. This shift has saved significantly on healthcare costs, California’s per capita rate of spending on long term care is close to the lowest in the country.
  • Studies show that when states cut back on home care services, they end up spending more on institutional long term care. Putting our Values into Action – Call Board of Supervisors and State Legislators.

Ask your loved ones to take action to ensure the dignity and respect that our seniors, people with disabilities, and those who care for them deserve: Ask each person at your Thanksgiving table to commit to calling their State Representative and County Supervisors to ask them to be the long term care, home care worker, and senior champions that our state and counties need.

State Reps — to find who their state representatives are they can visit:
https://www.facebook.com/townhall. There they will enter their address, city, and zip code and will be provided with a full list of who their State and Federal representatives are.

County Execs — To find who your County Board of Supervisors / County Executives are, you can visit NACo’s County Explorer – http://explorer.naco.org/ – and enter your county name for a full county profile.

Say Cheese! — To make it easier, you could ask everyone to do it at the same time — maybe during the break between the meal and dessert. Then, when you’re done, take a picture of everyone at your Thanksgiving table making calls and e-mail it to us at MyStory@seiu2015.org or Tweet it out with the hashtag #CareCrisis.

5 Dessert: Spread the Love – Spread the Word! ————————–

Tools for Immediate Action

Download the Holiday Toolkit!