Personal Care
Latest Personal Care News
Meichelle Huff, Home Health Aide, Partners in Care
November 7, 2020–“This is such a rewarding job.” Becoming a home health aide had always been a goal of Meichelle’s. While looking for work some eight years ago, she took an HHA training course and was immediately assigned several hours of work on cases scattered around New York City. When her supervisor came back to her and asked whether she’d consider a live-in position three days a week in Manhattan, she quickly said yes. It was a life-changing decision. “My client is an elderly, bedbound lady with Alzheimer’s who never spoke English and is nonverbal—but we have our own way of communicating,” says Meichelle. “I have a song that I’ll sing to her so that she knows that it’s me. As soon as she hears it, she starts reaching her hands out to me.” Meichelle admits that she was a little nervous to start with. “I had never bathed or changed anybody
Partners in Care Home Health Aide Supervisors: Supporting HHAs Through the Pandemic
August 4, 2020–As COVID-19 took over our lives last spring, the world stood up and took notice of a new set of heroes—the doctors, nurses, and other health professionals who bravely battled the virus on the front lines. Fewer people, however, are aware of the tremendous efforts of another set of heroes: the nation’s dedicated home health aides (HHAs), and the equally dedicated HHA supervisors who support them. At Partners in Care, home to 7,000 home health aides, the COVID-19 pandemic meant these supervisors had to help their HHAs deal with daily concerns around going into the community and risking exposure to the coronavirus, in addition to their normal tasks of managing their HHAs’ work status and schedule. “When the pandemic hit, we lost a lot of aides. Many were too scared to work, and some of them got sick,” says Shama Barrett, Manager, Certified Bronx/Queens Choice Unit, who 16 Partners in
Saluting Patricia Watson, Partners in Care’s Longest-Serving Home Health Aide
December 14, 2017–Every day, over 8,000 Partners in Care home health aides (HHAs) provide care to thousands of New Yorkers, many of whom are VNSNY Home Care patients and CHOICE MLTC members. Out of this large and dedicated group of aides, five have been with Partners in Care since the affiliate was acquired by VNSNY in 1983—including two HHAs who have been working with Partners in Care since the 1970s. Over the next several weeks, Frontline VNSNY will be posting profiles of each of these HHAs. Today, we begin this series by saluting the longest-serving of these home health aides: Patricia Watson, who joined Partners in Care in 1976, a year when Gerard Ford was president, inflation was high, and the country celebrated its bicentennial. “I Love My Work So Much!” With 41 years of experience as a Partners in Care home health aide, Patricia Watson holds the distinction of having served