Low pay has left Texas with a crisis-level shortage of attendants to help people with...
She worries that her attendant will see the Dairy Queen banner boasting $16 an hour flapping in the wind on her drive to the grocery store and be tempted to apply.Worries that she’ll find something better than the $11 an hour she’s paid to keep Nancy alive.IN CRISIS:
Nancy Crowther, 64, talks about the importance of her live-in attendant, Julie McConnell, earlier this month at her home in Austin. “My life depends on it,” Nancy said. “A human touch just makes you more human.” Others receive attendant services through non-Medicaid services such as the Consumer Managed Personal Attendant Services program.Personal attendants in Texas are paid a base hourly wage of $8.11, an amount that has left the state with aof attendants — especially as the number of Texans needing them is expected to grow by nearly 95,000 by 2028, according to a report published this year by the Coalition of Texans with Disabilities.
But disability advocates, including Nancy, have been fighting for higher pay for attendants for years. Base hourly wages have increased less than $1 since 2013., the average pay for home and personal care aides in 2021 was $14.15 an hour “Plenty of people with permanent disabilities can stay relatively healthy, but not without support,” said Dennis Borel, the coalition’s executive director. “We have the capacity to shift funding to the front end and keep people as healthy as possible.”On most days, Danny Saenz is able to get into bed at night without help. But if something goes wrong, he can find himself face down in bed, his arms trapped beneath his body for 30 or more minutes.
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