Covid-19 has exposed social problems that existed long before the pandemic. For one, Covid-19 has exacerbated long-ignored challenges we face in caring for the elderly, the disabled, and younger children. Nursing homes became foci of infection and death during the past 18 months. Group homes, day-care, and home-care services for the disabled and elderly disappeared. Schools closed. Caregivers clearly rose to the top of the list of our most essential workers. And this essential workforce, itself sickened, further reduced the substructure holding up our infection-shaken economy.
Backlogs for home and community-based care were already impossibly long for hundreds of thousands of people before Covid-19. Back then, inadequate services challenged predominantly low-income Americans who had to rely on government subsidized caregiving. During Covid-19 the shortage became an issue for everyone. Fifty-three million family members were already providing most of the care for vulnerable seniors and people with disabilities before Covid-19. As caregiving shortages became rampant, the burden of caregiving fell to all, making it next to impossible for families with two working adults to also juggle caregiving responsibilities. Without care options, many adults, most often women, left the workforce.
Essential work, as is now abundantly understood, has historically been underpaid. Covid-19 has exposed a caregiver workforce earning substandard salaries. Caregivers, such as nursing assistants and home health and personal care aides, earn on average, $12 an hour. Most are women of color; about one-third of those working for agencies do not receive health insurance from their employers. By the end of this decade, an extra one million workers will be needed for home-based care.
Read the full post on The Turning Point.