Are you going without home care services, either because the agency cannot meet your needs or because you use CDPA and you cannot hire enough staff? Your Legislators, New York’s Governor, and the Department of Health need to hear about it, because you are not alone.
New York has the distinction of being the 'worst in the nation' in terms of unfilled home care jobs. Poverty-level wages as low as $18,600/year, and Upstate the wage is $5,200/yr under the legally required minimum wage for fast food. With a rapidly aging population, these problems will only get worse, and the state will need to fill hundreds of thousands of job openings for home health and personal care aides in the coming years. If we don’t improve the quality of home care jobs and make meaningful investments in this sector, the workforce shortage will worsen, increasing the need for forced institutionalization — a clear violation of folks' civil rights.
Right now, many New York State officials don't believe there is a crisis, or that it is as bad as we report. That's why the New York Caring Majority is gathering these incident reports from disabled New Yorkers and older adults who cannot get the services they need because they or their agency cannot hire or retain home care workers.
When you fill out this form:
1) It will automatically send an email with your name and story to your state legislators as well as New York’s Governor.
2) We will later share anonymized collated data with New York’s Governor, the New York State Department of Health, and the NY State Legislature in order to urge them to address this mounting crisis.
If you are going without home care services, either in a traditional home care agency or through CDPA, for some or all of your authorized hours, please submit an incident report.
Your story will be used exclusively for advocacy purposes to support our work to include Fair Pay for Home Care in the NY State budget. We will not share your personal information with other organizations or entities without your consent.