Care For Your Own Future
Early this week, I attended an event called the First Care Congress where ttendees were very passionate about a great cause: care giving. The First Care Congress was the launch event of Caring Across Generations campaign. This campaign marked the start of a national fight to protect home caregivers after several states have passed domestic workers bill of rights. To kick of this campaign, more than 50 different organizations, including community based organizations, aging and disability advocates, and worker rights groups have worked for months to get prepared.
In the morning session, Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis spoke highly of the campaign saying, “I'm proud to stand with you”. She ended her remarks with a Spanish sentence, “SI SE PUEDE”, means “yes we can”. After that, more than 10 speakers, including organization leaders, patients, employers, doctors, home care providers stood up to share their stories. Speakers expressed gratitude towards people who helped them and cheered the achievements that they made, despite many difficulties. Although there are still a lot of problems, people showed great determination and perseverance by making powerful statements like:
“Protect what we have and create what we need!”
“Faith, dignity, justice, respect!”
“Passing a law is not a win, we win when there is a change of life.”
Through these sincere speeches, I learned a lot about the current situation and what we should do to change it. In the end, people signed a petition to urge the Department of Labor to narrow the “companionship exemption”, which excludes home caregivers from federal minimum wage and overtime protection.
In the afternoon, the Care Congress was split into three tracks to take some actions. At these actions, community, faith, and labor leaders expressed their opposition of cutting Medicare and Medicaid funding using testimonies to share their heart-touching stories to explain why Medicaid is essential.
One American turns 65 every 8 seconds. The aging population is quickly increasing and they need care. To get better care, we must provide home caregivers with quality jobs and a life with dignity. It is not hard to imagine how frustrated we would be when we need someone to take care of our loved ones but can’t find adequate care. To prevent this from happening, we must start to care and take action.
