Caregivers help residents remain at home

By Bettina Adragna/Staff writer

Rocio Mendoza helps Tom and Josephine Beach of Santa Maria with their laundry, paying their bills, shopping for groceries, making meals, bathing Josephine, shopping for clothes and cleaning.

She's available to the Beachs by cell phone. If they need bananas at the grocery store, they'll call her before she comes and she'll get them on the way in.

“She's very considerate,” Tom said. “She'll show you where things are in the refrigerator before she leaves.”

“She's kind and she's nice,” Josephine said.

Mendoza is an in-home caregiver for the In-Home Supportive Services program, which is funded by a combination of county, federal and state funds. She and other caregivers are enrolled in the In-Home Care Network, formally known as the In-Home Supportive Services Public Authority. The IHCN matches caregivers to clients.

The public authority is a governmental agency that trains, matches, screens and counsels caregivers for the clients of the In-Home Support Services program. It employs social workers who do an assessment of interested clients to let them know if they're qualified for in-home services, and if so, which ones. Public authorities such as this one exist solely in California at this point, although other states are looking to replicate the system.

Davida Willis, director of the public authority, said it allows for low-income, blind, disabled and frail elderly residents to stay in their own homes.

“Most people are happier,” she said. “The idea is to keep people safe and happy in their own home for as long as possible.”

Antonio Valero, the authority's registry specialist, oversees caregivers, counsels them on issues and to prevent turnover, and interviews both caregivers and clients.

Caregivers need to have a strong sense of boundaries, Valero said, because sometimes clients ask them to do tasks that aren't part of their job.

He said Mendoza and the Beachs seem to work well together.

“It's a very good match,” he said. “It's a long-lasting match.”

When he gets a request for help, Valero tries to match both the clients' and caregivers' time needs. If a retired nurse wants to work 20 hours a week, he will seek a client who needs just that amount of care. If a client is in need of a caregiver with more time to devote, he finds the client that caregiver.

Mendoza said she worked at Wal-Mart in Bakersfield before transferring to the Wal-Mart in Santa Maria.

“I got tired of it and decided to do something different,” Mendoza said.

She heard about the in-home caregiver position through the CalWORKs program, which provides employment services and temporary financial assistance to families. Training for caregivers is mostly on-the-job. The public authority conducts a background check and an interview, and asks for a Social Security card and a photo identification. Job applicants provide work and personal references and attend a three-and-a-half-hour orientation, as well as going through additional training, such as CPR classes and videos on how to give clients a bath or how to deal with an Alzheimer's client.

Caregivers can qualify for medical insurance if they work 70 hours a month for three consecutive months. Some caregivers don't need or want insurance, because they're covered by a spouse or have insurance at another job.

Mendoza likes the sense of accomplishment she gets from her job and the relative independence.

“I thought that being a home caregiver is really hard,” she said. “But then, once you kind of work with them, you get it in.”

She is meticulous, separating money into twenties, tens, fives and ones when she goes to the bank for the couple, and making the two strawberry milkshakes with strawberry ice cream, powdered strawberry milk mix, strawberry preserves and whipped cream.

“I try to help them pick out what to eat,” Mendoza said.

“I don't want them to eat the same thing all the time.”

Mendoza goes to the bank near the beginning of the month, and fills the Beach's prescriptions when needed.

She makes the strawberry shakes in the morning for breakfast, does her other tasks in the mid-morning and prepares them lunch around 1 p.m. She leaves around 2 p.m.

She compares her job to that of a nurse.

“I don't put needles (in) or anything like that, but I can help them get better,” she said.