By Gina Macris

Christina Battista, a supported employment coordinator for Skills For Rhode Island’s Future, says she never would have been able to earn a master’s degree or hold a job if it weren’t for a personal care assistant.

“Someone is literally my hands,” says Battista, who has a physical disability. Her personal care assistant helps her shower, cook, do laundry, take her shopping, help her meet up with friends, “and so much more.”

“Being able to live, rather than just exist, means more to me than I can express in words,” she said.

Likewise, Patricia Sylvia says she wouldn’t have been able to live happily at home for three and a half years after her stroke if it hadn’t been for a certified nursing assistant who helped her with everything from bathing to laundry to cleaning.

But Sylvia’s caregiver died last August. As a result, she’s lost 15 pounds and she feels her health and independence are threatened.

A wide range of medical and human service programs established to serve Sylvia and Battista and hundreds of thousands of others are facing a critical workforce shortage caused, in large degree, by the state’s low reimbursement rates for the pay of direct care workers.

Sylvia and Battista both spoke at a State House press conference March 8 in support of companion legislative bills that would address the critical need for direct care workers through mechanisms designed to set fair market pay rates every two years.

All members of the Senate have signed on as co-sponsors of legislation introduced by Sen. Louis DiPalma, D-Middletown setting up a rate review process that draws community representation into an advisory committee working with the Executive Office of Health and Human Services (EOHHS).

DiPalma said it’s the first time in his 14 years in the Senate that any of his bills has received unanimous support from his colleagues.

“This is about investing in hundreds of thousands of Rhode Islanders to ensure they have the services they need, for which they’re eligible, and for which the state is authorized,” DiPalma said.

Rep. Julie A. Casimiro, D-North Kingstown, has introduced the same legislation in the House; one bill aimed at reimbursements for privately-run human service programs licensed by the state and another for medical and clinical programs.

”Our health care system is suffering a crisis of care that has only gotten worse because of the pandemic,” Casimiro said.

“Severely underpaid” direct care workers in an “understaffed and under-supported” system are crossing the Rhode Island border to find better-paying jobs outside the state, she said.

Maureen Maigret, a decades-long advocate for the human services, said, “Everyone would rather get services at home, and it is also the clear law of the land that services be provided in the least restrictive setting possible.

And yet we have failed to build the kind of system that allows this, largely because we have failed to recognize the value of our direct care workers.”

Patrick Crowley, Secretary-Treasurer of the Rhode Island AFL-CIO, spoke from the workers’ perspective. “When working people are uplifted and they can lift up the community that they service, our entire community here in Rhode Island is better off.”

Crowley added: “If these bills can build the scaffolding we need, I say, let’s do it.”

In each case, the rate-setting process would be conducted every two years by the EOHHS with the advice of a 24-member advisory committee.

Tina Spears, executive director of the Community Provider Network of Rhode Island, said “Everyone deserves a living wage.”

“This solution would evaluate the costs” faced by providers and respond to them, she said.

Because the legislation would not have an immediate impact, Rhode Island must use some of its unspent funds from the American Rescue Plan Act to shore up human service agencies, Spears said.

The legislation gives EOHHS until March 1, 2023 to complete the first rate review recommendations to the governor and the General Assembly.

EOHHS would collect data from the state’s Medicaid administration, the state Department of Health, and agencies responsible for addressing poverty, child welfare, mental and behavioral health, developmental disabilities, and aging.

Then EOHHS would analyze the data in conjunction with separate 24-member advisory committees for medical and human services programs.

“It will cost money two years from now, but this is money we should invest,” DiPalma said, so that the state never again goes back to a situation in which a lack of staff forces infants and toddlers with developmental disabilities to wait for early intervention, as they have in recent months.

At least two other states, Massachusetts and Colorado, have adopted similar rate-setting processes, DiPalma said.

He noted that in Massachusetts, health and human services makes up 56 percent of the state budget, although that doesn’t mean Rhode Island should invest the same proportion in its human services sector.

At the same time, DiPalma said, Rhode Island is accountable for a wide swath of services, including child welfare, services for those with disabilities and the elderly, medical care for the poor, and behavioral health and substance abuse programs, among others.

Without a change in the way the state sets rates, those services will become increasingly unavailable, he said.

In 2014 a lack of integrated community-based services for adults with developmental disabilities resulted in a consent decree with the U.S. Department of Justice that is still dogging the state.

In that case, a review of rates paid to private providers of developmental disability services is underway under court order.

For the full text of the bills, follow these links: S 2311, S 2200, H 7180, H 7489