From family members stepping up to care for their loved ones, homecare workers struggling to make ends meet, people with disabilities forced into poverty, and older adults who want to age at home but can’t… too many people are struggling. Together, we can ensure that all of us can access quality, affordable care when and where we need it and that homecare workers are treated with respect and dignity.
In New York
We are a movement of seniors, people with disabilities, family caregivers, homecare workers, and other domestic workers from all across the state.
Community-based, long-term care is the fastest growing sector of healthcare. But policies and programs have yet to catch up with our state’s changing realities and, as a result, our families are struggling.
Those of us who cannot pay out-of-pocket for care are often sent away against our will from our homes and communities to nursing homes. Our families are spending generations of savings to pay for care and grappling with increasing caregiving responsibilities. Meanwhile, the people we often rely on to care for our family members struggle to get by on poverty wages.
We want to make homecare affordable and available to all who need it, to create the quality long-term care jobs to meet our growing demand, and to defend basic and essential programs such as Medicaid, the Older Americans Act, and the Affordable Care Act.
All New Yorkers deserve the care necessary to live full and healthy lives. Now is the time to change the way we care.
Read our full platform and see all coalition members: https://www.nycaringmajority.org.
In California
Our work in California has addressed issues of affordability and dignified homecare for workers and employers since our founding.
Many of our leaders and members are people with disabilities who must either deal with a challenging system of Medicaid-funded homecare or pay for out-of-pocket and struggle to afford the care they need. We know firsthand how homecare is undervalued, which hurts both worker and employer alike.
Support at Home: A Trailblazing Model
In 2016, in partnership with our worker, senior, and disability allies in the Care Council in Northern California, including the California Domestic Workers Coalition, Senior & Disability Action, Jobs with Justice San Francisco, and others, we won $3.2 million for two years to start nationally unique program called Support at Home.
The program provides a sliding scale homecare voucher for poor seniors and people with disabilities who don’t qualify for Medicaid to cover up to 15 hours of homecare each week.
A first study of the program indicates that it has helped prevent trips to the emergency room, and funding has just been renewed for another two years.
Universal Homecare in California
Working with the Northern California Care Council and other partners in Southern California through 2017 and 2018, we set out to win universal homecare in the state, creating millions of great jobs for immigrant workers and ensuring that all Californians could live and age in the place of their choosing.
In that time, we:
- Made affordable homecare one of the top issues in the 2017-18 Governor’s campaign through meetings with all of the top gubernatorial candidates by using compelling testimony from our worker and employer members, being a regular presence at major campaign debates, and organizing our own campaign debate.
- Won $3 million in the California State Budget to study the long-term care needs of the state to give us the data we need to craft a realistic proposal for a long-term care/long-term supports and services (LTC/LTSS) benefit to help people stay in their homes and increase wages for homecare workers.
- Grew a powerful coalition of senior, worker, and disability organizations called the California Aging and Disability Alliance that is fueling the work to win this LTC/LTSS benefit by 2021.
To learn more or get involved, email [email protected].
Partners: Pilipino Workers Coalition and Caring Across Generations; Faith Based Coalition of Southern California; United Domestic Workers (ASFME); California Foundation of Independent Living Centers (CFILC); Caring Across Generations
