Opinion: Put Focus on Home Health Care

There is hardly a day when we don't have a conversation with someone about an elderly relative who needs care. Who among us on Long Island isn't touched by seniors in the family who can no longer cook a meal or shower unaided, or who prematurely move to a nursing home because they can't afford or find a qualified home health aide?The number of seniors on Long Island is quietly growing larger by the year, and the challenges in providing quality home health care and the workforce to deliver it are growing too.Through several hundred individual conversations with congregants of different faiths and backgrounds, those of us at LI-CAN (Long Island Congregations Associations and Neighborhoods, a multifaith, nonpartisan citizens' organization) have heard the frustration of those unable to find qualified aides. Demand for home health aides far exceeds the number available, even though thousands of Long Islanders are unemployed.Other congregants are immigrants, working as home health aides, who are frustrated by how little dignity they are afforded because they are "foreign." They are often taken advantage of by employers, whether a family or an agency. Aides speak of receiving inadequate supervision, and there is little or no ongoing training to care for seniors with special conditions such as Alzheimer's and diabetes.