This week is the five-year anniversary of the Illinois lockdown for COVID-19, and it’s a solemn day for Yvette Anderson and her fellow front-line nursing home workers. Far too many front-line workers, including members of our union, and the residents they cared for lost their lives to COVID.
While the pandemic was stressful and traumatic for us all, for caregivers like Yvette, it also revealed the true extent and human cost of the understaffing crisis in nursing homes like the one where she works. She remembers the devastation and chaos clearly. And even though it’s been five years, Yvette can’t shake the feeling that conditions within our nursing homes have only gotten worse for those who live and work in them.
When one of our loved ones is residing in a nursing home, we all expect them to receive quality and attentive care. As executive vice president of Illinois’ largest health care union, I’m privileged to work with dedicated caregivers like Yvette who do this essential work with compassion.
Yvette works overnight shifts, where she’s the only certified nursing assistant on staff. She’s responsible for the care of 30 or more residents at one time. Every day, Yvette makes impossible decisions between residents, who all simultaneously need her attention. Day in and day out, she endures the heartbreaking reality of having to choose between feeding residents, keeping them clean, or charting them properly — all while management continues to demand more. She often cries on her drive home, thinking about the residents who who weren’t able to have dinner because they need assistance eating and could not get it.
And this isn’t just happening at Yvette’s nursing home. There is a dangerous staffing crisis in nursing homes across Illinois. Studies show that short-staffing leads to poorer outcomes for residents. Nursing homes know how many hours of direct care each resident requires to meet their needs, but research from SEIU Healthcare Illinois shows the average Illinois nursing home resident doesn’t receive nearly enough of these necessary care hours. It’s reported that nearly 1 in 5 Illinois nursing homes was staffed below the legal minimum on most days.
It’s only going to get worse: Within the decade, we will need more than a quarter-million more long-term care workers to keep up with our state’s growing aging population. The number of adults over 65 in Illinois is set to nearly double by 2060.
Workers fought for and won historic legislation with groundbreaking safe staffing enforcement measures and $240 million per year in additional funds for hiring more staff. After many delays, this measure has finally gone into effect, and many nursing homes are now accruing meaningful fines. Hopefully this will be the push that the industry needs to staff safely. The pandemic demonstrated the importance of establishing and enforcing basic staffing standards, yet workers still do the jobs of three or four people
That’s why workers have been demanding solutions that can help fix our broken nursing home system, starting with holding owners accountable for meeting existing safe staffing standards and ensuring that all public funding intended for resident care actually goes to resident care.
While nationally, seniors and workers are facing attacks, including loss of funding and dismantling of vital programs and agencies, here in Illinois our governor and General Assembly have reaffirmed our state’s commitment to care. Five years on from COVID, it’s time to set an example for the nation — with lawmakers continuing to call for nursing home accountability and the industry itself doing its part to ensure that we have the safe staffing that residents need now — and for what may lie ahead.
Erica Bland-Durosinmi is executive vice president of SEIU Healthcare IL/IN/MO/KS.
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