The current health crisis shows how essential the work of caregivers with fragile people is. Badly paid, badly considered, they launch a petition and demand justice.
They are called carers. As if their work was only an accessory. However, these 226,000 women (97%) and men are on the front line, every day, to help the elderly, frail, dependent. They are therefore the most exposed to the coronavirus. And yet, they are not entitled to endowments with protective masks, hydroalcoholic gel and, above all, recognition, like nursing staff. As for their remuneration, it is simply indecent!
A survey (below) titled “How is the health crisis linked to Covid-19 disrupting the life support profession?” »Led by the company At will and the collective “Human first” shows how “it’s time to upgrade the auxiliary profession and not continue as before. This survey carried out with 1,100 auxiliaries tells us that “more than half” does not feel concerned by the applause of the medical personnel, every evening, at 8 pm. That’s why they decided to come out of the shadows to express their dissatisfaction and make a difference.
Proposals
During a press videoconference organized by Alenvi, this Wednesday, April 29, 2020, and relayed by the Departmental Councils, dhave that of Meurthe-et-Moselle, several carers have testified to the difficulties they encounter in the exercise of their profession. Soafara, for example, an assistant at the Louvea company in Nancy-Custines, says she is shocked that she was unable to obtain protective equipment. “Three pharmacies refused to sell me masks,” she says, “because we are not recognized as caregivers. However, we do humanitarian work and I love my job. “
Same point of view from Isabel (Auxiliary to Alliance Life): “At the start of the epidemic, we had concerns about having safety equipment. Now we have masks but we don’t have gloves. “
Since a few weeks, 43 auxiliaries and 24 leaders of several home help organizations, private and associative from all over France, have decided to work together to make 4 concrete proposals in order to immediately revalue the life support profession.
1. Registration in the national directories of health professionals;
2. Remuneration of € 1,500 net / month for full-time auxiliaries;
3. One profession = one branch, one collective agreement, one OPCO (skill operator);
4. All commercial companies in the ESUS sector (Solidarity Company of Social Utility) or mission-oriented company.
Public money
“I agree 200% with the demands of carers” assures Véronique Scida, director since 2005 of the Louvea home help and support service, in Custines (54) member of a cooperative network present on all of France. It manages a team of 35 carers (including two men) for 230 beneficiaries spread over the Metropolis of Grand Nancy and Val-de-Lorraine.
“I agree that caregivers should have the status of caregivers because, too often, they are considered bonkers by doctors or nurses. They also agree to increase their salary. But we are dependent on funding granted to beneficiaries through the personalized autonomy grants (APA) of the Departmental Council, allowances from the National Solidarity and Autonomy Fund (CNSA) created after the heat wave in 2003. Some pension funds also finance hours of cleaning. But 95% of our services are funded by public money. “
Social and solidarity economy
Véronique Scida would therefore like to have the means to better pay her employees. She also militates for a regrouping of the branches, that is to say a single statute for all the professions of home help that they depend on an association, a commercial or private structure. “Commercial structures should integrate the social and solidarity economy (ESUS or Mission Societies),” she said.
It is true that the home care “market” is particularly large. For Meurthe-et-Moselle alone, 8,800 people receive the Departmental APA, there are 3,000 disability compensation benefit (PCH). It should be noted that in the department there are 22% of people aged 75 and over who have benefited from 1,840,000 hours of benefits for APA and 550,000 hours under the PCH (2015 figures).
With the aging of the population, this “market” of the social and solidarity economy is expanding. Our societies have and will need more and more to call upon these women and its men of whom one can never say enough how precious and essential their role is. It is time to do them justice.
The impact of Covid-19 on the life support profession
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