Home care workers struggle to pay the bills
I have been working with the same home care agency for about 9 years. I like doing my job, I like caring for people. What’s happening is embarrassing.
What’s happening now is if I took a picture of my refrigerator, there’s nothing in it. I have nothing to eat. Once I pay my car which I need for my job, my gas, insurance, rent and heat there is nothing left. In fact, I won’t be able to pay my hydro or my phone soon. Right now my daughter and granddaughter are living with me. My daughter also works for the same agency, and she can’t afford to pay me rent. She will be moving out soon.
I heard that there’s a young woman with a child who works for them and they are sleeping on someone else’s couch.
It's sad to see how we're out there doing the work and not getting paid for it.
I have to charge my gas at the local gas station. The guy knows me and I have an account there. I don’t have a credit card and he let’s me charge it. When I pay him every two weeks, I don’t have money for food. Right now I don’t have money for hydro.
Another thing – whenever your hours are too low, your benefits are lowered. It’s a good thing I live in a small town and everybody knows me. My optometrist and dentist let me make payments to them. I still owe my optometrist $320.00.
I get paid every two weeks and I work between 55 and 60 hours a week, at $14.00/hr. Recently there was an article in The Brockville Recorder and Times where the case managers were crying the blues. Right now they make $37 and change an hour. In the new year they will be making $40.76 an hour and they were crying because they’ll only be working 35 hours a week. Oh, I feel sorry for them. For that money, I’d be happy to work 20 hours a week!
It gets harder every day going out to work in these conditions. You know, you’re supposed to go out everyday with a smile on your face and do your work. How do you do that when you’re stressed and hungry? I ate crackers tonight. Why should I have to do that? I’m working; I’m trying to make a difference.
As far as hours go, when you lose a client (going into the hospital, or dying) you don’t get the hours back.
Things are so bad that I’m having a hard time eating anyway. My doctor says it’s stress. Also, I have pulsating twitches in my eye, which the doctor says is stress.
This is embarrassing, but I had an exercise bike and I had to sell it so I could have money to do my laundry.
I was driving my car and this winter was awful and I noticed that I was swerving all over the place. I went to see a friend who said that my tires were bald and they needed replacing. He said they were dangerous. I had no money to buy new tires. I won tickets and a parking pass to an Ottawa Senator’s game, and I sold them. I hate people feeling sorry for me, and I had some other friends give me $300 for Christmas, so together with the Ottawa Senator tickets I could buy tires.
I know there are other people in the same boat, or even worse. And we wouldn’t be doing this work if we didn’t love what we do.
One of my friends could only afford to replace one of her tires. I went right into my supervisor and told her that wasn’t right. They don’t seem to care. If something happened and one of us was killed on the road, they wouldn’t care they’d just send the next one out.
They had asked us to let them know if there were any of our clients who could do without care since they were trying to save money in another department. It’ll be a frosty Friday in hell before I tell them that one of my clients doesn’t need help. I don’t know many 80 plus year olds who don’t need the help.
Some of the girls are scared to say anything.
The people in our community deserve care and they deserve workers who are relatively happy.