Health Care for Health Care Workers

In another indication of Maine’s heightened awareness of the direct-care worker crisis, a recent Kennebec Journal Morning Sentinel article about an awards ceremony for exceptional caregivers focused largely on the need for better pay and benefits for direct-care workers.

The article, which ran in the August 16 issue, quotes state long-term care ombudsman Brenda Gallant on the poor pay and benefits typically available to workers. “Here we have caregivers who oftentimes can’t get care themselves,” she says. “They don’t have health insurance.” Lisa Pohlmann of the Maine Center for Economic Policy and the Maine Health Care for Health Care Workers campaign echoes Gallant’s comments. “We’re taking care of the elderly on the backs of low-income women,” she says.