Celebrating IHSS Workers
We recently received funding through a $100k grant from Social Justice Partners LA (SJPLA) to support frontline workers. As a result, we identified frontline workers who have been serving the sector and our participants for a long time to receive an award for their hard work throughout the years.
The people pictured below are registered as In Home Supportive Services workers – or IHSS Workers. IHSS is a county funded domestic work program meant to help disabled residents stay in their homes by aiding with activities of daily living – like cooking, cleaning, shopping, medication management, bathing, companionship, accompaniment, and more.
The compensation for this hard work is currently only $16.00/hour in LA County.
Domestic work – that work taking place in the home – has long been snubbed and excluded from workplace protections like minimum wage, and requirements for overtime pay. And while there has been progress in the last decades, wage growth for this field, where the clear majority of workers are women and women of color, lags other fields and contributes to the wage gap between the work of men and women.
IHSS work is hard. In an era of #MeToo, many domestic workers are subjected to sexual harassment daily and are forced to choose either leaving the situation or enduring this abuse to keep a paycheck. As the baby boomer population ages and rising rents forces seniors on fixed incomes into the streets, we will need more domestic workers who are compensated fair wages and show up almost daily to help with those basic tasks aiding people with special needs in remaining independent and successful in the community.
The kind of work these folks do is the kind of work that keeps people housed and healthy. The work putting sweat on your brow and pain in the balls of your feet, all while extending a smile and warm heart. We wanted to return this love to them, so we gave them each a check for $1,500.
We want to lift up the work IHSS workers do every day and time and energy they dedicate to our participants, especially through COVID.
We appreciate you and the work you do, Detiva Whitaker, Yvonne Felix, Sonia Martinez, Sandra Trotter, Edith Tapia, Kathrine Valentine, Elizabeth Matson, Terry Jackson, and Nicholas Henry!
To learn more about frontline workers, check out the video and brief by Vanessa Rios (2018) below.