Caregivers Are the Key to Transforming Care
Even as our population ages and needs more care, California is experiencing a caregiving crisis, with the State Auditor reporting before the pandemic that roughly 40,000 IHSS clients were going without the care they needed each month because there are simply too few providers.
Getting care in the setting of your choice is a human right, a basic freedom that we must protect.
There are more than 520,000 IHSS providers, predominantly women and people of color, who currently serve over 600,000 IHSS recipients. That number of people needing care only keeps growing! Older adults and people with disabilities who require care at home, are our neighbors and loved ones- we need to ensure the IHSS workforce industry can be there to provide that care.
The PROBLEM
Our state can’t recruit, train, and retain enough caregivers to meet our current needs – much less the rapidly growing needs of an aging population, with a 65+ population that will nearly double in the next few years. A fragmented system has left caregivers struggling to bargain with 56 different agencies statewide over pennies, keeping caregivers locked in poverty and those who need care too often without any options, putting them at risk of injury or unnecessary and costly nursing home care.
THE SOLUTION
Caregivers across California are uniting to fight for a better solution: a statewide voice for caregivers, so that we can transform our profession and meet the growing need for caregiving.
AB 1672 would empower IHSS caregivers to transform care statewide by giving frontline caregivers the opportunity to negotiate with the Governor to improve the IHSS system, shifting the responsibility to bargain from the counties to the state. With a unified voice at the state level, caregivers can advocate for those they care for and demand the respect to transform their profession, no matter where they live in the state.”
With a unified voice at the state level, caregivers can advocate for those they care for and demand the respect to transform their profession, no matter where they live in the state. Only when caregivers are empowered statewide can California improve care for clients statewide.