Dear Editor:
I am a Certified Home Health Aide and am very concerned about a potentially disastrous bill that Governor McGreevey and some of our Assemblymen are sponsoring: Bill A-3778/S-2662, the so called “Quality Home Care Act” which, if passed, promises anything but quality home care!
Having worked with frail and elderly people for 11 years now, I feel horrified by the strain that passage of this bill would put upon them. They would be forced to interview, hire and supervise their Home Health Aides by themselves and would lose the familiar and trusted Aides that visit them now in their homes, plus the supervisory help of the trusted nurse that is familiar with their particular case.
And what about the Certified Home Health Aides’ jobs? I and the other Aides now have steady pay checks, back up from our agencies and job security. How can we working people survive without guaranteed pay from week to week? Also, being as we Aides are in a helping profession, we care about our elderly and ill, and even as we would be worrying terribly about our livelihoods, at the same time, we would know that our elderly population was suffering too, as much or even more than we were, and that is a real cruelty.
Please, all who would be affected by this and all who care about the frail in our society, notify your legislators that the Quality Home Care Act is just not acceptable to you!
Jane F. Pedler CHHA