This Action Alert comes from the Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Association of New York State ...
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Over the past several months, you have been working tirelessly to solve the workforce crisis plaguing CDPA and home care overall by giving these workers the respect they deserve - a respectable wage.
All of those efforts come to a head in the next few days. If the Senate or Assembly don't include this in their responses to the Governor's budget, it will be yet another year of inadequate wages.
It will be yet another year of an inability to hire workers.
Most of all, it will be a failure to reimagine the long-term care system and prevent a disaster like the nursing home travesty we have just seen.
Please take time now to make two phone calls. Call Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and tell them we need #FairPay4HomeCare.
There are lots of reasons even groups that fight for home care or home care workers will give as to why we can't. They will say too much money was already spent to get home care workers to the new minimum wage. They will say we have to wait for Federal money. They will say the timing just isn't right.
But we can't wait. We must act now.
Will you call? Will you fight to make sure we make #FairPay4HomeCare a reality? Is a fair wage for your consumer directed personal assistant worth five minutes of your time?
Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, (518) 455-2585
Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, (518) 455-3791
Tell them:
My name is ____________ and I’m calling to say we need to make sure that the crisis that killed 15,000 nursing home residents can never happen again. The only way to do that is keep people out of nursing homes by solving the home care workforce crisis. The {SENATE/ASSEMBLY] one house budget must include Fair Pay 4 Home Care to create a minimum wage for home care workers equal to 150% of the minimum wage.
If you are interested in these or other disability advocacy issues, contact Colleen Downs, Systems Advocate at:
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colleen@ncci-online.com
518-563-9058 Ext. 110
The Mission of the North Country Center for Independence is to help people with disabilities to live more independent and productive lives, and promote better policies and community understanding of disability issues. NCCI serves people with disabilities, families, and the community on issues related to physical and mental disabilities. NCCI is led and staffed mostly by people with disabilities. It is one of the 41 Independent Living Centers in New York State. There are also hundreds of similar centers throughout the United States. NCCI serves Clinton and Essex Counties, New York.