Last year, I came up from Florida to visit my 85-year-old mother in Middletown and decided it was time to stay. Mom had several strokes a number of years ago. Her right side is paralyzed and she suffers from dementia, which when I visited was getting worse. She kept saying how much she missed me.
Good union home care jobs must be at the center of fixing our nation’s overstretched and underfunded long-term care system and addressing the systemic racism and sexism that devalues essential home care workers. SEIU home care workers and caregiving activists across the country are taking action on Home Care Day 2020 to call on elected
COVID-19
When Tanya Beckford was infected with COVID-19 while working at an assisted-living facility in Newington earlier this year, she told her children her last wishes. She did not know that people could survive the virus. Months later, she is alive — but ravaged by the physical effects of COVID-19 and the psychological toll of pushing
Last spring, as coronavirus swept through Connecticut and the state’s nursing homes became ground zero for deadly outbreaks, nursing aide Gloria Duquette pushed aside her fear and continued showing up for her shifts. Duquette was working upward of 80 hours many weeks between her two jobs at Kimberly Hall South in Windsor and Saint Mary
The Department of Public Health continues to investigate a COVID-19 outbreak at a nursing home in Norwich. According to DPH, as of last Thursday 13 residents and two staff members at Three Rivers Healthcare tested positive for the virus. Several people remain hospitalized and one person has since died. “I know that the infection is
COVID-19
Bipartisan lawmakers yesterday slammed Gov. Ned Lamont’s $450,000 interim report on how his administration has failed to stop Covid-19 from killing 3,000 senior living residents so far – more than 10% of that vulnerable population – and what it needs to do to prepare nursing homes for a second wave. Leading Democrats and Republicans alike
The state Department of Public health is investigating a coronavirus outbreak at a Norwich nursing home, where at least one resident has died and several are hospitalized after a supervisor returned from an out-of-state trip and tested positive when she returned to work. State DPH spokesman Av Harris said 13 residents and at least two
When prison officials found Daniel Ocasio lifeless on his bunk last week at the Corrigan-Radgowski Correctional Center with a COVID-19 mask wrapped around his neck, he became the third incarcerated person to die by suicide in Connecticut this year. Ocasio, 32, had only been at the Montville prison a week when he died, unable to
COVID-19 hit nursing homes in the Northeast states particularly hard, but those living in Connecticut long term care facilities died more frequently than in any other state – a result of missteps by the state and a nursing home industry hamstrung by limited knowledge of the pathogen’s nature, how it spreads and to whom it
State officials, who had planned to fund the broad testing of nursing home staff through Aug. 31, are extending their financial support through late October, pointing to the importance of identifying carriers of the virus and preventing further spread. Deidre Gifford, Connecticut’s interim public health commissioner, said in late July that the state had no