By Gina Macris

Private employers of congregate care workers – including those in group homes for adults with developmental disabilities - began applying April 28 for COVID-19 hazard pay that could be in the paychecks of their employees as early as next week.

Over the weekend, Governor Gina Raimondo announced the Congregate Care Workforce Stabilization Fund to temporarily add stipends of $100 to $200 a week to the pay of front-line workers in nursing homes and group homes making less than $20 an hour.

“She heard. She listened and she acted,” said State Sen. Louis DiPalma, D-Middletown, who for weeks has been pushing for hazard pay along with the workers themselves, their unions, and their employers.

“It’s a great step,” he said, although “something that needed to be done before now” to incentivize low-paid workers to remain at their jobs while the coronavirus pandemic sweeps through the state.

He said he hopes the four-week pay boost, which kicks in May 4, will have the effect of curbing community spread of COVID-19 by discouraging group home workers from going to second jobs many of them need to make ends meet.

Tina Spears, executive director of the Community Provider Network of Rhode Island (CPNRI), said “we have been desperate to get support for our workers.”

The announcement of the workforce stabilization fund was “positive and welcome news,” Spears said. Asked whether the money would be enough, she said “nobody would say more wouldn’t be appreciated.”

Employers may apply for the 100 percent forgivable loans on the website of the state Executive Office of Health and Human Services, which is linked here.

The state urges employers to complete their applications by May 2 and “will make every effort” to deliver the lump sum payments next week, by May 6, according to the EOHHS website.

Employees making less than $20 an hour may be awarded the temporary pay hikes for four weeks, through June 1, according to the following schedule posted in the “program guidance” on the EOHHS website:

• Those who work 30 hours a week or more may receive an extra $200 per week.

• Those who work from 22 to 29 hours per week may receive $150 extra per week.

• Those who work from fifteen (15) to 21 hours per week may receive $100 more per week.

The forgiveness on the loans depends on audits showing the payments were used as intended, entirely for temporary salary hikes to eligible workers.

The average pay for a direct care worker in a privately-run group home for adults with developmental disabilities is about $13.18 an hour, according to CPNRI, a trade association of about two thirds of the three dozen private developmental disability service organizations operating in the state.

In March, CPNRI asked for a $4.55 hourly raise for direct care workers, or an average total of $17.73 an hour – still about a dollar less than the starting hourly wage of those who work in state-run group homes for adults with developmental disabilities. Members of the Service Employees International Union protested the pay earlier this month at one privately-run group home and received a $7 hourly raise.

The Congregate Care Workforce Stabilization Fund announced by Raimondo comes from the CARES Act, the emergency aid relief package of more than $2 trillion enacted by Congress in March.

Because the overwhelming majority of deaths from the coronavirus have occurred in nursing homes and other congregate care settings, the “next step” is taking mobile testing to those facilities in order to map the spread of the virus and inform better ways of containing it, DiPalma said.

Of the 1180 persons with developmental disabilities in group homes, there were 63 individuals testing positive for COVID 19 who have not been hospitalized as of April 27, according to a spokesman for the state Department of Behavioral Healthcare Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (BHDDH). An additional 17 persons who have tested positive have been hospitalized, and there have been a total of five deaths, including four residents and one staffer, according to the BHDDH spokesman.

In a recent survey, families said their top concern was that a loved one with developmental disabilities might be hospitalized and unable to understand what was going on around them without a familiar caregiver, who could both help health care workers with communications and reassure and assist the patient.

The survey was conducted by a coalition of several advocacy organizations: RI FORCE (RI Families Organized for Reform Change and Empowerment), PLAN RI (Personal Lifetime Advocacy Networks), The ARC Family Advocacy Network, RI Developmental Disabilities Council, RIPIN (Rhode Island Parent Information Network), and the Paul V. Sherlock Center on Disabilities.

The coalition would like to see the governor and the Department of Health issue an order to hospitals to permit patients to have companions in cases in which there are challenges to effective communications and informed consent to care, according to a spokeswoman.

Spears, the CPNRI director, acknowledged that families are having difficulty getting support and information during the COVID-19 crisis.

She said that she is concerned not only with the human and financial resources necessary to get her provider network through the immediate crisis but with “creating some level of normalcy” for support of individuals in the future.

“There’s not an end in sight for us,” she said. “We will need an unprecedented level of support” for the developmental disabilities community “for some time.”