Voice your opinion! Should there be more caregiving agencies to care for the elderly/disabled in their homes?

around here there are plenty of agencies the problems are (1) the cost of care... medicare does not pay for in-home services under most conditions while many seniors need help around the house & help caring for themselves... end result the seniors, even with very low-income, must find a way to pay for these services themselves (2) lack of employees to fill the low-wage jobs... while this has improved with the economy being so bad & there are more people willing to fill minimum wage jobs, sometimes there still aren't enough workers to cover all that is needed & those workers feel overwhelmed (3) lack of incentive for workers to do this job and/or to do the job well.... these employees are getting paid minimum wage & will often work 70 hours per week to make ends meet as well as to meet the demands of the agencies they work for... as a result these employees are often too exhausted to do the care needs with enthusiasm.. many times having less patience with the patient as an end result (4) because of 2 & 3... many times the agencies end up hiring care-givers that have proven criminal histories... including domestic violence & theft.... many times, those problems carry over into the patient population with everything from medication being stolen, money being stolen directly, checks being stolen to indirectly steal money, ID being stolen.... to patient being seriously harmed by an abusive care-provider point being.. the problem around here isn't lack of care agencies to choose from... it is that all have the same end result for all these other reasons EDIT TO ADD: one other important factor, as pointed by sophie b... even though the workers rarely get paid more than minimum wage, the client who needs the help is billed @ 10 times the pay of the person who cared for them. This is to cover the cost for the agency to be in business and make a profit.... and that is why it is much cheaper for most clients who need home health care to hire an individual directly. One of the things we see often at our local senior citizen center is posting on a board (that others in the community who need work can see) for "help needed" offering $10 per hour for 2 hours per week, 1 hour per day, 2 hours per day with 1 hour being morning & the other being evening... all sorts of variations.... of people in need of help hoping someone who is honest will see the posting & need the work bad enough to accept the few hours & the times the help the help is needed.

Absolutely yes , the population is getting older and most people like to die at home

Sure, but the price for these services is out of this world. Most people with a steady paycheck couldn't afford the cost, let alone someone on Social Security.

here there are way too many caregiving already but what's great about that is that they are starting to compete for our dollars. Depends on what "right care" someone could be looking for. Finding isn't the problem, affording them is a problem. I agree with Achelos. When I worked as an HHA and homemaker they scheduled us for 4-hour shifts, that's $80 they'd charge, but I called a local agency last month who said they would work no less than 4 hours but that it needs to be weekly and that would be $320 for the month out of pocket. When I complained at the cost I was told that their workers are complaining that they wanted full time jobs. I responded "they're nuts" (excuse me) because what senior has $320 per month to pay, money just laying around. I told him that when I worked it was 2 shifts a day we'd work and back then it was around $7.50 an hour we got but it sure isn't that today. What you pay is a wage PLUS the agency fee and either way it's unaffordable. then you asked for us to email you, sounds like you either run an agency or want to start one. Something sounds fishy to me.