Mary Swifka:
We can't find people to hire. We can't find them ourselves, agencies cannot find workers, and that's because, well, there's a couple of reasons. So, one of 'em would be the fact that when you come into a position like this as a caregiver, you have no paid time off, you have no paid sick leave, you have no paid vacations, you have no access to health insurance, right? One of the things that in our experience is really critical is giving paid caregivers access to a meaningful wage — a meaningful hourly wage — and depending on who you talk to around the state, that Medicaid money does not go far enough to pay caregivers a living wage. You can go to any big box store around here, you can go to a coffee shop, you can go to a discount store, you can work at a grocery store, and you will make more money per hour than you will as a caregiver.