Federal Pay for caregivers of family- A few states have this available but 1. It’s not consistent across those few states 2. It’s only a few states. 3. It would save so much money for elderly or disabled to be cared for at home rather than in nursing homes/residential living facilities.
I have a severely disabled child that is complex care. His care is 24/7 so I cannot get a job. I also tried to take care of my grandmother with dementia in 2017. Because she was alone part of the time, she would forget her medicine or take risks and fall. She’d end up in the hospital and then a nursing home “to heal”, costing Medicaid/medicare thousands and thousands of dollars. If I would have had an ability to pay someone to take care of her at home with a decent wage so they can pay their own bills, it would have saved thousands of dollars. Same issue with my son. If I can’t afford to pay rent/utilities/food/gas without getting an outside job, he will have to go into a residential facility so I can work to take care of his sister. These residential facilities are thousands more a month than if they would just pay a decent pay to stay home and care for him. His care is better at home (no one better than mom!), his care is more consistent at home (same person/people!), outcomes are better at home, keeps families together, keeps families from losing their homes. MA has recently started a caregiver pay program that allows parents to earn an income while caring for their disabled child that’s based on the programs established by TX and AZ but it doesn’t go far enough. My son gets 48 hours a week of pay (even though his care is 24 hours a day) at $29 an hour (sounds like a lot!) but with rents here being $2000-$3000 a month based on the space needed for all of his supplies, machines, and accessories, it’s not enough. I struggle with this because I’m not one to ask for help and I also recognize that he is MY child, not the state’s, not my neighbor’s, but if we can’t survive without putting him in a residential facility, then we can’t survive. I’ve tried online jobs but they generally require you to be online and signed in at certain times and because his care is so random through the day, I can’t plan for specific times I can work. There are many things that I legally can’t be paid to do, like feeding my son because he’s an aspiration risk, because I’m not a licensed nurse, that I do several times a day and, in fact, know specifically for my son, how better to do it than a licensed nurse. Same thing with our elderly. A family member knows better how to get their person to comply than a stranger at a nursing facility or a stranger coming into the home. And with the nursing shortages happening across the country, there is less help for home based healthcare anyway.