Making the System Work

In Pennsylvania, tens of thousands of people in our communities are supported by taxpayers to receive the services they need. Much of this money flows through the state’s 52 Area Agencies on Aging (AAA) which are responsible for connecting seniors to services and overseeing the quality of care.

In Philadelphia, the responsible body is the Philadelphia Corporation for Aging (PCA).  PCA is one of the largest and best-known AAAs in the country, and prides itself on innovative services for seniors. However PCA continues to do business with home care agencies like Total Health Home Care or Lee’s Industries – agencies that cheat caregivers out of pay they are owed, cheat citizens by failing to pay its tax bills, and contribute to the problems that undermine our home care system.  PCA also does little to help clients and caregivers who work well together to overcome obstacles to staying together.

Finally, PCA does not supply seniors, their families, taxpayers or caregivers with information about agencies doing business in Philadelphia. It does not collect some very important data – like workforce turnover rates. The information that it does collect – about financial stability, criminal background checks, and instances of abuse or neglect – are not shared with the public.

Caregivers go to PCA

Home caregivers ask PCA to investigate Total Health Home Care and Lee’s Industries.

PCA could do much more to safeguard services for seniors, caregivers and taxpayers.

Write PCA President Rodney Williams and ask him stand up for quality, by

  1. Doing business with agencies that respect state and federal law. We should not be lining the pockets of lawbreakers!
  2. Making sure that PCA puts quality over profits by protecting what matters in home care – the bond between seniors and workers, not the bond between agencies and their billable client-hours!
  3. Requiring agencies to supply data on key quality measures, like wages and benefits for caregivers, turnover rates, and incident reports, and then making all of the information that it collects available to the public!