In-home aid workers for seniors in midst of rising shortage

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) -- Every day homebound seniors across the state go without any form of personal care or access to services that help them live safe, independent lives.

And due to a rising shortage of in-home aid workers, the need in central Ohio is reaching a critical state.

"The need for home healthcare is an absolute national crisis right now," admits Chuck Gehring, the President & CEO of LifeCare Alliance.

For more than 100 years LifeCare Alliance has been providing health and nutrition services for seniors all across central Ohio.

Dozens of requests come in every single day for their Help-at-Home program.

But recently, they've been unable to fill all those needs.

"We have two tiers of service," details Program Director Alli Charzanowski. "We have direct care workers that provide the in-home cleaning. They run errands, they can pick up medications, groceries, things of that nature."

They also have personal care aids.

"Those are the STNA's or the certified aids who go in and provide more initiate care," Charzanowski describes.

LifeCare Alliance is the only central Ohio agency to offer services like these to low income seniors for free.

Bethany Dukat, who has worked as an in-home aid for 11 years, sees the impact first-hand.

"Sometimes you're the only person they see in the week, so they have someone else to talk to," says Dukat. "Some of them just become like family sometimes."

It's the only service offered by LifeCare Alliance that Ghering says people have to wait on.

Their other services, like Meals-on-Wheels, have been largely unaffected.

"We're denying hundreds of people a week," Charzanowski warns. "If you think about that, and add it together, how many individual and unique clients that is that we're just not able to get to, because we don't have the people to send out to them -- it's a lot."

According to the Ohio Council for Home Care, agencies like LifeCare are turning away three out of every four referrals.

Some, contact more than a dozen agencies before being able to schedule in-home aid.

"We have recently raised our pay for a third time in the last couple years and it's extremely competitive," adds Gehring, who lays out the hiring challenges they have faced.

But for Dukat, the work is about more than money.

"It's rewarding, because you're there and you make a difference and they count on you, they rely on you, they ask for advice," adds Dukat.

Some of the positions don't even require special certification, just the heart to help someone in need.

"We have people at LifeCare Alliance who have been with us for 40+ years doing this work," Gehring promotes. "Because they interact with the clients, they know their doing something important for them."

LifeCare Alliance is holding an open job fair Thursday for those interested in becoming a direct or personal care air.

The fair will be from 1-4 p.m. at their office located at 1699 Mound Street.

For information you can call Help-at-Home at 614-278-3149.