Bay Area caregivers face physical, financial peril aiding elderly clients.
Some risk health on job; others not able to work
While doctors and nurses have been on the front lines fighting for patients infected with the coronavirus, other caregivers have played an instrumental role in helping the elderly and infirm stay out of an already overburdened medical system.
That comes with personal risks for some home health aides. Others have had to stop working to protect their clients.
Some inhome caregivers like Wei Xie are licensed to assist people in their homes, but not to administer medication or perform other medical duties. Wei has continued to see clients who can’t do activities that many take for granted, like eating and bathing.
“Without us, they have nobody to help them,” Wei, who works for Alice Home Care in Alameda, said through a translator. “In this line of work, we go to work because our clients need us.”
Wei said one client is severely weakened by latestage cancer and needs help with showering and other essential activities. In the past that patient slipped and fell during a shower, Wei said, a dangerous incident normally but more so now that hospitals are brimming with COVID19 patients and have little room to spare.
A need to be physically there for clients also creates
vectors for infection. Wei said she wears a mask, washes her hands frequently and cleans her clothes when she gets off work to avoid passing the infection to her clients or her husband.
Caregiving is burdensome, but not necessarily wellpaying work. For the caregivers like Elizabeth “Becky” Pecoraro who are no longer working during the pandemic, it has been an emotional and a financial hardship.
Pecoraro, 78, is a caretaker with Help & Care in Saratoga and Santa Cruz, and has been unable to see clients, some of whom are over 100 years old, because of possible coronavirus infection.
“I’ve been trying to kind of stay away at this point because I'm not sure what my exposure has been,” Pecoraro said. “It makes it horrible, you’re worried about your clients.”
Pecoraro said not working dried up most of her income, although her son has helped with her bills.
“A lot of caregivers have family and kids. They need to stay home but also need the paycheck and live check to check,” said Markus Breitbach, the CEO of Help & Care.
With shelterinplace orders in effect across the Bay Area and many companies closed, the need for some caregivers has dropped as students come home from college and families have more time to devote to caring for elderly family members, according to Breitbach.
“We lost a good chunk of business because people wanted to be safe” and not have outside caregivers come into their homes.
But for seniors who cannot perform the basic tasks unassisted and who have little outside contact with the world, caretakers have no choice but to go to their homes, Breitbach said.
That has led to new rules for caregivers who are still working to avoid bringing infections into the homes of vulnerable older people, according to Seth Sternberg, the cofounder and CEO of home care and technology company Honor in San Francisco.
The company employs hundreds of home care aides in the Bay Area and has implemented protocols, including the increased use of protective equipment like masks and gowns, and allowing caregivers to stay home even if they are feeling slightly ill.
“If we can keep people healthy in their homes, then we can stop them going into facilities,” Sternberg said, noting having personal protective equipment is essential in doing that.
Keeping clients out of the hospital has always been a goal of the industry, but never more so than during a pandemic that threatens to overwhelm the health system, according to Lucy Andrews, a registered nurse and the owner of At Your Service Nursing & Home Care in Santa Rosa, which works with Honor.
“It has always been our mission and overriding philosophy, now it's more important than ever that we are on the front line at home,” Andrews said.
Protective equipment has been notoriously hard to find since the onset of the pandemic, and much of it has been directed to frontline health care workers.
“We were last in mind so we had to get creative,” Sternberg said, noting that his company placed multiple orders for protective masks from companies in India and China, and that some of them had come through.
Companies are stocking up and rationing protective equipment even in areas where the virus has not made significant inroads, said Elaine Flores, the chief operating officer at Medical Home Care Professionals in Redding.
“We have a supply on hand to take care of 150 field workers and clinicians,” Flores said, adding that she fears that will not be enough if the coronavirus spikes in Shasta County, which had 11 cases and one death as of Friday afternoon.
For Pecoraro, the caregiver, she said the current challenges are a test of her faith.
“I’m a very firm believer that a lot of it is a blessing and that the lord is watching over you,” she said of her work. “What you give out, it will come back,”