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Planned Follow-up Meeting Blossoms into National Movement

A meeting initially conceived as a small gathering to follow up on a survey of direct-care worker associations blossomed into “a movement of passionate, caring activists whose mission is to reform the work place to ensure quality care through quality jobs.” That’s how Leonila Vega, executive director of the Direct Care Alliance (DCA), describes the national conference her organization convened on August 15-17 in Des Moines, Iowa.

The conference was the start of a new era for the DCA, which is carving out a role as the catalyst that supports direct-care worker associations and coalitions as they grow, developing resources they can use and bringing them together to learn from each other.

Hosted by the Iowa CareGivers Association (ICA), the August conference was “a historic event,” says Vega. “Direct-care workers leaders and their supporters from 18 states got together, for the first time in history, to say for themselves how and what they are willing to do gain respect for the profession and fight for benefits and pay and so on.” Nearly 70 direct-care worker leaders and their supporters attended the two-day event.

Sharing Knowledge and Ideas

Presenters provided technical assistance on creating nonprofit organizations and fundraising, among other practical matters. An AARP representative presented statistics about long-term care and direct-care workers that will be made available to attendees, “because fundraisers and policymakers not only are interested in stories -- we also have to have statistical data,” says Judy Clinco, founder of the Direct CareGiver Association in Tucson, Arizona, and a member of the DCA board.

Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, also spoke, observing that long-term care quality depends on having a stable and qualified direct-care workforce. Finding and keeping enough workers depends on paying them well and providing benefits like affordable health care. The senator’s interest was significant, says Clinco, because “It’s the beginning of our issue being represented at the national level. This is an issue that he certainly acknowledges as needing attention.”

“It was a defining moment for workers associations around the country,” says John Booker, a DCA board member and founder of the National Association for Direct Care Workers of Color, of the conference. “All of us have been doing out own thing, just surviving in our own states, worried about our own constituencies. I think what came out of that conference was a national movement.”

Another significant outcome, says Clinco, was “consensus from the people dedicating themselves to this profession that they want to be referred to as direct-care workers.”

For Booker, “The best part of that conference was the hardest part, and that was the leaders of the worker associations coming together and fashioning a kind of mission statement for a national association of worker associations. That was powerful. It was heated; it was tough; it was grueling, because everyone was thinking of their own constituents and associations. But with the forging of that document, the beginnings of a national unity front was actually accomplished.”

DCA Field Coordinator Roy Gedat agrees that the passion and thought put into the forging of that document, which he calls a “conference sentiment,” were significant. “The harder the discussion is, the more valuable it is, because that means that people are really talking about the hard stuff,” he says. “I think [the associations] are not in one place, but they’re closer to being in one place than they ever were before.”

Closing that gap won’t be easy, warns Di Findley, a member of the DCA’s board of directors and the executive director of the ICA.“There’s a lot of process that still has to occur at the state level, and it really has to be on their own terms. Everyone’s at different stages at their developments or philosophically, and the political climate in everyone’s state is different.

“That’s probably one of the bigger challenges DCA will have too, being able to enter into this leaving the cookie cutter at home, because each state is going to have to develop in the way that’s best for their situation. It’s like we – the DCA and the state associations – have two huge areas we have to concentrate on: building capacity for the state associations and building capacity for the DCA so it can help the state associations built their capacity. It’s a huge undertaking, and I think people have to be patient.”

Going home full of hope

“Sitting at those different tables, talking to the new associations and the old pros, talking to different workers associations from around the country and listening to what got them going and their experiences, really gave people the feeling of oneness, that we’re all in this together,” says Booker. “People left feeling energized. They left feeling that they’re not just in this alone, that we have the beginning of a new movement.

“It was a fragile beginning, though,” he notes. “There needs to be a follow-up to this.”

That work has already started between various conference attendees on various projects, and hope remains high that it will continue. “The common goal is that we all want to see this happen so DCWs have the tools for self-empowerment,” says Findley. “That’s been my dream -- that the DCA would be that entity that helped us all come together with the same voice and have greater impact on national policies. I think that can happen.”

In the works at the DCA

As outlined in the September 27 DCA e-newsletter, the organization is planning three initiatives as a result of the conference:

1. Create an online national networking system to nurture the development of direct-care worker associations and coalitions through “education, effective communication and collaboration, and DCA provided services, tools and products.”

2. Launch the Voices Institute to educate and support individual workers, consumers, employers, labor, advocates and policy makers. Vega sees the institute as teaching skills such as advocacy strategies and the nuts and bolts of creating sustainable organizations.

3. Strengthen the communications capacity of the DCA and its allies in order to provide an effective national voice to the Quality Care through Quality Jobs campaign.

“I’m very, very excited about the future for this organization and for state associations, and the impact that both national and state associations will be able to have on this issue,” says Clinco. “I left the conference believing that this would happen in our lifetime – that this will be a better job in terms of the pay, the supervision, the working conditions and so forth.

“There’s a lot of work to be done, but I’m very hopeful.”

By Elise Nakhnikian, PHI

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