Excellacare Care Provider Sarah Sutherlin gets her phone ready for her client Carmela Palamara, 92, of Brownstown to sign her name to clock Sutherlin out after finishing coloring together at Palamara s home in Brownstown on Wednesday, April 14, 2021. Sutherlin has done in home personal care and homemaking to help her live independently three days-a-week for the last three years.
Credit Ryan Garza/Detroit Free Press
Advocates say they re still confident that a $2.25 pay increase for direct care workers will be included in next year s budget.
That s even though the state House Appropriations Committee did not approve an amendment for the pay increase on Wednesday.
6:41
Hear what direct care workers do, and how a political street fight torpedoed Michigan s effort to shore up its caregiver system.
Misty Evans stands in her client Ric’s living room in Midland, helping him pick out a record to play on the turntable.
“Which one do you want?” she asks. Ric loves popular music from the 1950s, 60s and 70s. “Boy oh boy oh boy,” answers Ric.
Music selection is just one of the many tasks Misty helps Ric with during her shifts as a direct care worker. Ric, whose last name we’re withholding at the request of his parents, is 58. He has cystic fibrosis and lives in his own, subsidized apartment. He has profound intellectual and physical disabilities and needs care around the clock. Sometimes he hits himself. Sometimes he hits his caregivers.
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There is a serious shortage of direct care workers in Michigan and the nation, caused on large part by the low pay, long hours, arduousness, and no benefits. But people who stick with it do it because they love to take care of others. We meet once such person, Sarah Sutherlin, during one of her shifts at the home of 92-year-old Carmela Palamara.
There is a serious shortage of direct care workers in Michigan – as well as states across the nation. Direct care workers provide caregiving for disabled and elderly people – everything from making meals and managing medications, to housecleaning and companionship. About half of these workers provide services to disabled and elderly people living in their own homes.
Born on Christmas Day, Santa Staples was a masterful nurse who ran the operating room with military precision, showing up at 3:30 a.m. on her day off to handle a particularly complex surgery. Not one to suffer fools, she had a flintiness that could intimidate even the neurosurgeons. These people get so sick. The ones that get sick get so, so sick. Every system in their body shuts down. Our last, last resort is to put people on a ventilator. We are only doing it now if we absolutely have to. And they’re not gonna fare well, usually, if they get put on a ventilator. Outcomes are not good.”