LAS VEGAS, Nev. (FOX5) – Advocates say Nevada is in a home care worker crisis.
There is a shortage of workers and it is only expected to get worse. To learn more, FOX5 met with an 88-year-old Henderson woman who still lives independently at her senior apartment but needs help from a home care worker and spoke with her care worker about why it is so difficult to find and keep people in the profession.
Regina Brown-Ross takes care of 88-year-old Mary Irene Mitchell for 10 hours each week. “That includes anywhere from bathing to toileting to cleaning to running errands, going to the bank, picking up prescriptions, making doctor’s appointments,” Brown-Ross explained.
“You have to understand that it takes a lot of people to take care of me, and she does a wonderful job,” shared Mitchell.
Mitchell had polio as a girl and with her legs permanently losing muscle, she’s been prone to falling all her life. Without a home care worker, she could not live on her own.
“I would have to go into a home. She just is the nicest thing I can have,” Mitchell said about Brown-Ross. For Brown-Ross, Mitchell is more than just a client. “You become their companions and you become their family,” Brown-Ross contended.
Right now, the minimum wage for the state’s 13,000 home care workers is just $16 an hour.
“They are over 80 percent women and 50 percent people of color. Homecare workers for the longest they have not been seen as a value. Home care workers are essential,” Brown-Ross asserted.
Because of poor pay and a basic lack of benefits, many potential workers are doing something else and one out of two home care workers leave their jobs in the first year.
At the same time, Nevada’s 65 and older population soared by 46% in the last decade. There are now almost half a million seniors living in the state, and the need for home care workers grows daily. It is estimated Nevada will need 32,000 new caregivers in the next decade.
There is legislation in the works for a $ 20-an-hour minimum wage to bring in and retain more home care workers. According to data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, for every client who receives home care rather than being sent to a nursing home, Nevada saves about $75,000 annually.
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