By Shefali Milczarek-Desai & Tara Sklar.
“One of my sisters told me to have some dignity and leave [my abusive workplace]. I told her that I can’t feed my kids with dignity, and that was my reality.” –Immigrant Woman Long-Term Care Aide
The COVID-19 pandemic exposed a long-term care crisis that has been brewing for decades. It also offered lessons for much-needed reform to the long-term care industry. One such lesson is that both older Americans and their caregivers experience unnecessary suffering and death due to entrenched industry practices that marginalize long-term care aides, a worker population that is increasingly made up of immigrant and migrant (“im/migrant”) women. Even though im/migrant women constitute at least one-third of the long-term care workforce, their perspectives are largely absent from the legal and public health literature and national conversations around long-term care reform. Full Article.