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Home Sweet Home Care Newsletter - February 2012
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Shirley Cohen, Executive Director
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Dear friends, clients and associates,
Thanks to a two-week hiatus on the U.S. Department of Labor push to increase caregiver wages across the country, home care agencies and seniors and their families have been temporarily spared a dramatic hike in costs of aide services. I blogged about this matter several weeks ago (see blog here), but my colleague, Greg Yu, our capable and esteemed Operations Manager, is also very concerned and wanted to say why he thinks that this measure is the wrong thing at the wrong time.
This action by the DOL is no small matter. It will negatively affect a lot of people, mostly seniors, but plenty of caregivers and small businesses too. That's why we think it would be worthwhile to acquaint yourselves with the issue, so that you can possibly affect the outcome in a positive way. We'll be happy to relay to interested parties any and all ways you can help the effort to push back against the current, massive SEIU drive to acquire new members and voters. So stay in touch and we will as well.
Please find Greg's blog below as well as lots of other interesting articles about our favorite subjects: health, aging and eldercare.
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Shirley Cohen is the Founder Executive Director of Home Sweet Home Care, a full-service home care aide agency serving the San Francisco Bay Area since 1990.
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Government Intervention with Home Care Agency Pay Rates Will Hurt Seniors, Caregivers and Home Care Businesses Nationwide
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Greg Yu, JD/CPA - Operations Manager
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The recent Department of Labor proposal to remove the overtime exemption for companion care is terribly misdirected and creates a punitive impact upon ethical, hardworking home care agency providers. Of course, more wages sounds great, especially in an election year. Ultimately, the punitive effects are borne by seniors who cannot detect the fresh dangers and risks. All around, they will suffer from higher costs of basic home care as they age or convalesce in their own homes. Many seniors will have no option but to cut the days and hours of care they need to what they can afford, and the higher overtime gains for workers never truly materialize.
This wrong-headed move will dramatically increase the cost of health care and reduce the overall health and welfare of our seniors. We cannot permit this crisis to worsen, but the DOL proposal is going to do just that. It wrongfully chokes up the healthy, legal channels of home care delivery and the vital payroll tax collection and protective roles of full-service providers (FSPs) of home care.
Our government regulators' judgment remains clouded, because they don't understand, or appreciate, the true nature and identity of the employer and source of funds. Home care agencies serve as a steward of the senior's funds used for home care. If it is too expensive for agencies to remain in business, seniors will simply go underground or hire a relative. That defeats the goal of more wages and hours for caregivers and leads to seniors hiring even fewer, not more, qualified home care workers. Politically and emotionally, the government demand for higher wages for caregivers sounds good - except that demand and belief that more money be paid to the workers pushes the burden squarely and forcefully on the senior and her family.
If this measure passes through the legislature, it will no longer make any financial sense for a senior to hire any agency whatsoever for live-in home care. If an agency or agency-dispatched caregiver asks the senior to pay a huge overtime premium over a 24-hour period, the senior will say one thing - no thanks. Then she will find a way to bring that trusted caregiver into the home privately, whether legally or under the table. The promised overtime under the DOL's directive will then evaporate on the spot. As will the payroll taxes the State relies on.
Home care agencies have very thin margins, and their main mission is to serve their local communities and their seniors. In its effort to reconcile the two polarities of offering lower rates for services which seniors want and expect, with the higher wages to caregivers which the government wants to impose, the agencies will cease to exist to supervise, protect the senior and to organize the home care. This will be a terrible consequence as agencies play a vital role as a buffer and accountability partner for both the senior's family and the caregiver.
When their profits are squeezed out by the DOL, these owners will be inclined to close their businesses (not being a charity) and do something that can support their own families. The public and our citizens are not so near-sighted, so we urge the DOL and the Administration to act in the best interests of our seniors across our country and truly protect take-home pay of caregiver workers.
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10 Rules to Eat Safely for Your LifeEvery day you have to navigate a toxic nutritional  landscape. You have to hunt and gather in a food desert. You have to survive the American supermarket and dodge the dangers of industrial food. The good news is that if you follow 10 simple rules you can eat safely for life. Think of them as shortcuts or tricks to use when shopping or eating. If you just do these things and nothing else, you will automatically be eating real, fresh food that will prevent, treat and even reverse most of the chronic diseases that drain our energy, stress our families and deplete our economy. You don't even have to understand anything about nutrition. Just follow these goof-proof rules for getting healthy, losing weight and feeling great. Read More
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Do Not Underestimate a Person with Dementia People suffering from dementia are commonly  perceived to be incapable of logical thought and written off as cognitively bankrupt, but this is just not the truth of the matter. Dementia takes many years to develop and mental decline progresses ever so slowly over time, leaving cognitive abilities fully functional in many respects and partially impaired in other instances.
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Gluten Sensitivity: Fact of Fad? Move over fat, salt, and sugar. There's a new  dietary villain in town and its name is gluten. Scan the grocery aisles and it's impossible to miss the proliferation of products proclaiming that they are "gluten-free."
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Exercise as Housecleaning for the Body When ticking off the benefits of physical activity, few of us would include intracellular housecleaning. But a new study suggests that the ability of exercise to speed the removal of garbage from inside our body's cells may be one of its most valuable, if least visible, effects.
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Woman Weds on Her 100th Birthday
On February 6th, Dana Jackson celebrated a  century of life with about 100 of hernearest and dearest at the Rosewood Health Care Center in Kentucky. An ice cream cake in her honor was frosted with the special message, "Congratulations, you are never too old.
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Let's Get Social with Social Media
Don't forget to check out our Twitter feed (see icon below). I think you'll be amazed by how many quality articles we find and publish on all kinds of things that affect the lives of seniors. We're very pleased and proud to offer our readers this wonderful resource library and want to invite you to check it out and sign up for our RSS feed so that you can get the latest posts on your desktop.
We'd also like to invite those readers who work directly with the eldercare community to join us on LinkedIn and Facebook (see icons below) where we can all discuss issues of concern and interest to seniors and their families. While you're on the Facebook page don't hesitate to click the "Like" option to help bring our articles to the attention of more readers.
Also, feel free to call us directly by phone at 415.776.7337 if you have any input about our newsletter, want to let us know about special community events or, if you want to inquire about our home care aide services.
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Home Sweet Home Care is a full-service home care aide agency which has been providing bonded and insured home care aide services in the San Francisco Bay area since 1990. We have a large pool of qualified and professional home care aides available to provide warm and caring services to seniors on a part-time, full-time, temporary or long-term basis. Our care providers are ready to assist seniors living with a wide range of conditions, including Alzheimer's, hip replacement recovery, post-op recovery, cardiac, cancer, stroke, Parkinson's, Hospice, to name a few. We also have live-ins. Call us today to find out how we can help at 1-800-286-2774 or visit our website at:homesweethomecare.com
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