Older workers fill labor shortage for home care agencies
Glenda Roewe is there when her elderly clients wake up. She serves food, she changes bedding, she tries to get them to execise even if they are adamantly against it.
“I feel like I’m an extension of their normal life,” Roewe said.
Yet for such an integral role they play in seniors’ lives, home care givers only make an average of $11 an hour, if that.
With few financial incentives to bring in new workers, the home care industry is facing a labor shortage that is expected to worsen with time. Industry experts anticipate a need for at least 13 million new in-home caregivers by 2030.
“We’re facing a shortage of qualified people to serve rapidly growing demand,” said Jeff Bevis, CEO of Ohio-based FirstLight Home Care.
To fill in the gaps, agencies such FirstLight are tapping into an older work force willing to care for clients older or closer to them in age on a part-time basis.
For the industry, it’s a temporary solution to a worsening problem. For caregivers like Roewe, 61, it’s a chance to make a positive connection with someone who needs her.
And there are plenty in need.
Houston is one of the top U.S. markets for home-care agencies, with an estimated 700,000 individuals over the age of 65 living in the metro area, according to Patrick Jankowski, senior vice president of research for the Greater Houston Partnership. That subset of the population is growing at a rate of 25,000 a year, he added.
Yet as demand for in-home services grows, care agencies are struggling to find a supply of workers.
In 2014, FirstLight started recruiting in senior centers and retirement homes as a means to fill in the labor gap. Today, 18
percent of the company’s 5100 network employees are over the age of 65.
The Cincinnati-based caregiving company has 171 franchises across the U.S., including six offices in Houston.
While hiring older workers can prove beneficial in the short-term, Paul Osterman, professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and author of a book on the home care industry, notes that it’s really a stopgap solution to a larger problem.
One of the key issues within the industry that has led to high turnover rates and labor gaps has been pay, Osterman said.
Only 40 percent of home care services are government-funded, yet Medicaid dictates the private sector’s wages.
With Medicaid designed for those unable to pay private agencies for care, Osterman said, workers are left with little to go on.
The private sector also points to a growing number of seniors unable to pay rates that would translate to higher wages. In Houston, for instance, one in every 10 individuals over the age of 65 live in poverty.
For Osterman, the solution lies in raising home care aides’ wages while providing them more training to handle medical care issues. That would in turn lower the frequency of expensive emergency room visits and hospital care.
Nonprofits also are experimenting with new business models that would address both service prices and employee wages, including home care cooperatives.
Capital Impact Partners, a Virginia nonprofit, together with the AARP Foundation, has been helping home care givers, primarily older women, develop businesses across the U.S. where workers cut out the middleman agencies that would connect them with clients.
Through this model, these workers split profits among themselves and create career advancement opportunities for those interested, said Candace Robinson, director of strategic aging initiatives for the nonprofit.
The goal is to change the perception of the industry while also empowering those who have long composed its work force, namely women, immigrants and people of color.
“If home care is still treated like babysitting, we’re not going to get anywhere,” Robinson said.
As the cooperative model continues to develop across the nation, those working in the traditional private sector model of home care agencies are putting more effort into recruiting older home care givers.
Even then, they face the issue of offering only part-time options, which limits the pool of applicants.
Yet for Mary Moore, owner of a Seniors Helping Seniors franchise in northwest Houston, the part-time work setup does the trick.
Moore worked as a private in-home caregiver for five years. When she turned 60, Moore looked for other career opportunities, but several places turned her down, calling her overqualified, she said.
She decided to run a homecare franchise hoping to offer employment to retirees her age and older who want to work but don’t necessarily need to. A majority of Seniors Helping
The goal is to change the perception of the industry while also empowering those who have long composed its workforce, namely women, immigrants and people of color.
Seniors caregivers working through hundreds of franchises across the U.S. are in fact seniors themselves — a tidbit that appealed to Moore when looking for franchise opportunities.
She figured a franchise dedicated to hiring older workers would offer better services since both caregiver and client would be able to share experiences.
“I understand their frustrations,” Moore said, “I know how my body is changing and some things aren’t going well for me.”
That connection helps give more meaning to Roewe’s work as well.
On a recent Thursday morning, Roewe helped Kenath Fether, 78, lay out the day’s paper for him to read in his Tomball home.
She comes over twice a week in between her other clients.
As Fether flipped a page in the newspaper, he slipped his half-full coffee cup closer to Roewe, who was reviewing some paperwork beside him at the kitchen table.
“Do you want me to warm it up,” Roewe asked. Fether smiled. “No rush,” he replied. One of the reasons Roewe joined FirstLight Home Care was because when they interviewed her, they asked about how she would ensure quality care for the client.
Roewe used to work as an emergency medical technician and cared for children with disabilities. Helping others has always felt like her calling. While she’s completing nursing courses at Lone Star College, caring for clients such as Fether helps pay the bills and gives her something meaningful to do.
She watches war movies with Fether in the garage he converted into a living room years ago. She listens to his tales of when he was an army pilot during the Vietnam War. She convinces him to lift some light weights by doing so with him.
It’s not much, but it’s what he needs, she said.
And it’s not all about the client’s benefit. Roewe appreciates being able to talk to Fether about the first Volkswagen, about the way coffee pots used to look and about her childhood dream to be a phone operator — all topics both Roewe and Fether can better relate to than a much younger worker.
Roewe acknowledges that better pay and societal respect for her line of work are crucial if the industry wants to ensure all those who need care get it.
For now, she finds the seniors helping seniors model to be working, if only because of the bond that can form among peers.