State Employees
Written by Donna Brooks for the Hartford Courant Link to the Digital Courant Article here Link to the PDF of the published article here Connecticut had one in-patient unit available for women in addiction recovery. Now, it’s gone. I can’t talk about women’s health and treatment without being political, especially not when the state of
Home Care
Some nights I drive along Route 8 in Naugatuck close to midnight, headed to my client’s house. My job is to help Mr. West, who is elderly, live at home with dignity and independence. I try to pick up extra shifts when I can, even though the late-night drive is exhausting, because Mr. West depends
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“As a union home care worker, I feel that our pain must be heard, our struggles understood, and that those in leadership must take all actions necessary to make sure that each personal care attendant (PCA), and those we care for, can live in dignity. We need Gov. Ned Lamont to fund our Long-Term Care
Home Care
This Mother’s Day, my hope is that all mothers, but especially those of us who are caregivers to children with special needs, will gain the ability to care for our own health with affordable health care. I have been personally caring for my son, Yehoshua, at home for the past 10 years. He was born
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Sunday, April 4th, we will observe Easter, a Christian tradition celebrating the defeat of death and the hope for redemption. But April 4th is also the 53rd anniversary of the assassination of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis. I was there then, in Memphis, a young girl in 1968, when it seemed
Connecticut
I’m not an old person. I’m 48 years old. But there are days when I get up and I just can’t move. My joints are so stiff. All because of COVID-19. I feel angry. I am among the forgotten casualties of this pandemic. A year ago, on March 23, I had to leave work because
Home Care
We were all a little lonelier this Thanksgiving as COVID-19 means that visiting with friends and relatives is risky business. With the stress of working and living with the threat of this deadly virus running through our communities, we’ll be digging deeper to find the things for which we are grateful. As a 59-year-old man
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.
For me, July 1 is my “a little more Independence Day.” I’m getting a raise from $15.85 to $16.25 an hour, along with 10,000 personal care attendants like me who with our union negotiated a raise through Connecticut’s Medicaid waiver program. It’s more than I ever expected to make, but life in Connecticut, where you need to
State residents may feel confined by social and work restrictions brought on by COVID-19, but for prisoners and workers in Connecticut’s jails the luxury of self-isolating at home doesn’t exist. The idea of “loosening up” and finding the “new normal” in our prisons is a long way off. We’re still “popping positives” for COVID-19 while