The City and County of San Francisco leads California in pay and benefits for its public home care workers. Their In-Home Support Services (IHSS) workers will be paid $9.00 per hour plus paid health and dental benefits. These pay and benefit levels should reduce turnover among IHSS workers and, thus, improve home care service. The campaign for these gains was coordinated by the Planning for Elders in the Central City (PECC), a neighborhood-based planning, training, and advocacy organization. PECC's goal is to improve home care in a way that benefits both IHSS workers and their clients.
One of the major steps that PECC took to move toward its goals was to make San Francisco the first county in California to take advantage of a state law authorizing counties to create Public Authorities to run the state's IHSS programs. In helping develop the San Francisco IHSS Public Authority, PECC won a governing board for the authority that brought together all the stakeholders in San Francisco's IHSS community: independent providers, public agency people, and unions. Thus, PECC both helped improve the effectiveness of the authority and created a forum in the all of the City's home care advocates could regularly meet and work.
Learning Objectives: Those listening to this presentation will learn about how stakeholders in home care such as independent providers, people in social service agencies, and unions, can be brought together in the political arena to improve home care programs
Keywords: Home Care,
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: None
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.