86% turnover rate in home health care workforce every year....

and an average wage of $9 per hour - these are the issues addressed by two recent pieces of legislation.

Sen. Harkin has recently introduced legislation to make sure that health care workers get the same minimum wage and overtime protections as other workers. The Fair Home Health Care Act of 2007 extends the Fair Labor Standards Act protections to home health care workers. This bill is meant to address the critical shortage of home health care workers in the US.

It is co-sponsored by Sens. Ted Kennedy, Patty Murray, Barbara Boxer, Maria Cantwell, Bob Casey, Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd, Barack Obama and Chuck Schumer. According to an article in Able newspaper (Nov 2007), Sen. Kennedy pointed out the need to end the exploitation of home care workers and to guarantee fair pay to "encourage them to provide the best possible home care that millions of Americans depend on."

According to the terms of the bill, all health care workers who are "employed by a home care agency, work more than 20 hours a week or perform home care on a regular basis" would be covered by it. There are more than 1 million home health care workers in the US who provide care to the elderly and disabled.

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A recent rally in Washington DC by Direct Support Professionals (who provide services to those under Medicaid) and organized by ANCOR (American Network of Community Options and Resources) urged support for legislation by Reps. Lois Capps and Lee Terry to amend the Social Security Act to provide states with funds to increase wages paid to DSP's. This legislation is called the Direct Support Professionals Fairness and Security Act (HR 1279).

In a front page article in Able newspaper (Nov 2007), it states: "Nationwide, there are approximately 1.4 million individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities who require professional support in order to live and work in their own communities rather than an institution. Unfortunately, there are only about 875,000 direct support workers serving just this one segment of the disabled population."

[the full edition of Able News is now available online at ablenews.com]