Who Benefits from Biden’s Infrastructure Bill addressing Caregivers? Three groups
The first and foremost beneficiaries are paid caregivers who serve older people on Medicaid. The problem is they are not paid enough. These caregivers make an average of about 11.50 an hour or $23,920.00 a year, a figure below the poverty line. The goal for the Biden plan is $15.00 an hour which is $31,200 a year. This is above the federal poverty line of 2021 but only if you have 5 people in your family and will in another phase have to go higher.
Biden’s Program Benefits Caregivers Who are Primarily Women of Color
Predomitality women and people of color, these caregivers and their families struggle to survive on their present low salaries. In theory, much of the funding for the Biden Plan would be used to improve low-wage caregiving jobs.
Despite this invaluable work, caring mainly for elders and people with disabilities. 1 in 8 of these direct caregivers’ lives in poverty
Why a Caregiver Infrastructure Bill.
This bill repairs the ravaged road to caring for the huge number of elders who need care now and in the future. Why do we need a superhighway to care? The Elderly will grow to
a vast number while caregivers are in decline, leaving a rutted highway that needs major repair- for boomers, elders, retirees, and future older people in the coming to get the care they need 40 years.
Caregivers are hard to recruit because of the low salaries and the pandemic. COVID infected them as they were front-line workers, had to work three jobs to keep financially afloat, and were not in line to get the first shots. So they often became COVID victims and spread it to their own families. The bill will help the salaries of caregivers, which will help rebuild the potholed path to caring for elders now and in the future. The number of Americans ages 65 and older will more than double over the next 40 years, reaching 80 million in 2040. The number of adults ages 85 and older, the group most often needing help with basic personal care, will nearly quadruple between 2000 and 2040.
Why Unionize?
The bill would raise the salary for care providers who are caring for the poorest elders, themselves on Medicaid. It would also give them a right to collectively bargain nationwide through the SEIU. This is why the union needs to be involved. States can randomly lower the $1500.00 an hour plus a union needs to be in place to raise the minimum wage of $15.00 higher in the future to really gets these critical workers out of poverty.
Biden believes Unions Hold up the American Worker
Biden supports unions. They have been decimated over the last three decades. The rejection of the Alabama Amazon union is an example of this.
Not clear yet how the $400 billion would be spent?
Biden’s proposal doesn’t specify how the $400 billion in additional funding would be spent, beyond stating that access to home and community-based care would be expanded and caregivers would receive “a long-overdue raise, stronger benefits and an opportunity to organize or join a union.” The proposal is the second tier of the bill and will be more clearly defined in the next round.
We will look at the next two groups that benefit- senior and aging families -in my blogs in the next few weeks.
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Thursday, May 20th
2 PM- 3:30 PM Pacific Standard Time
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Successfully Market the safety of your homecare or geriatric care management agency in the Precarious “Semi-Post”- Pandemic Period-When Aging Families Are Still Full of Fear
Learn to market the safety of your agency, to overcome hesitation to use homecare as COVID slowly diminishes, vaccination accelerates yet elders are not fully vaccinated, COVID still spikes, variants explode, vaccines are taken off the market, people refuse vaccines, conspiracy theories abound and 8000 American still die each day.
Understand how to innovatively sell” trust” in your safe care management services so family caregiver’s & 3rd parties choose you as a safe agency, when family care providers are still hesitant to trust your services because of COVID
Learn to Use public relations and marketing to show you are focused on caregiver and care management safety by developed protocols. to show you do testing, infection control, and procuring the safest personal protective equipment (PPE)
Show you follow the safe new CDC’s leaderships path to safety to overcome the distrust created by the former federal government’s, mixed messaging that left family caregivers confused frustrated, feeling there was no clear path to safety through home care or care management
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You will learn
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5 steps to create an e-newsletter with the right copy, to get out the word about your
safe COVID 19 services
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10 steps to set up a Zoom webinar to teach local aging agencies and caregivers about your COVID safe services and other local resources to assist caregivers in the community
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7 steps to use social media to alert aging family caregivers to the clear path to your
GCM agency provides safety from the diminishing but still present virus in the US.
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5 steps to get local media coverage of your COVID -19 safe services, care providers, and general excellent care management and home care products free PR with radio and TV coverage plus pick local newspapers where ads may pay off to sell your COVID Products
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5 steps to understand how to generate word of mouth customers for your COVID -19 safe services using your continuum of care in your community
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10 steps to use the powerful new tool of Video to market your agency’s COVID safety and excellent services as the pandemic diminishes but is still in your community, state, and country
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When: May 20, 2021, 02:00 PM Pacific Time (the US and Canada)
served the quality of care needs of clients but also the
website and email newsletters. On the front page of your website, the main marketing tool, list why your agency is safe to work with during COVID-19. What % of you of office staff, caregivers, have been vaccinated against COVID-19; a partnership with your County Health Department; your staff is wearing PPE & type that is safest: staff and caregiver screening for COVID- temp checks, etc. Lifespan’s website has an excellent first page on 
a family can use a practice called reminiscence therapy to help combat the frustration, confusion, and depression that can often accompany dementia and even bring joy to the older person
Easter eggs, create easter baskets, do an Easter egg hunt, serve an Easter brunch or dinner, get them involved, let them watch, allow them to help if possible, serve them ritual food or to taste it and ask when how they experienced these rituals, when they were young. If you have old albums of pictures from their childhood of them at Easter, look and the photos with them. Then listen.
it is important to involve elders who wish to celebrate the holidays. Religious rituals celebrated with family, friends, members of a congregation ( even on zoom in COVID)offer socialization and reminiscence thus the quality of life so many elders and can return joy to their lives especially in the pandemic that was like maggots to the wound of senior isolation.
about”. As we age this question becomes primal, as we face death coming at a rapid pace. We wonder- do I go to heaven, to hell, or just energy or dust. Will I meet angels- my wife in heaven.?
a seder or Easter brunch or dinner, with a small fully vaccinated group from a congregation 0f a local church or synagogue or through a zoom holiday meal event or service.