Ella is a former home health caregiver who made the difficult decision to leave a profession she loves for financial reasons – the wages simply were not enough to survive on. Funding for home health caregiver support comes through the state-run Choices for Independence (CFI) program. The underfunding of CFI for more than a decade has caused NH caregivers to be grossly underpaid and resulted in a significant caregiver workforce shortage. Without a meaningful increase in funding to the CFI program, in-home care agencies will be forced to end services, leaving hundreds of NH residents without care. The work that they do is critical to so many, yet they are paid an hourly wage much less than they could earn at Walmart or McDonalds.
This crisis will only get worse if these conditions are allowed to continue unchecked.
