I was in a meeting today talking about issues related to personal care attendants and the subject of training came up. In Minnesota, there’s a fair amount of interest in giving PCAs more opportunities for education and training as a means to enhance skills and possibly prepare them for other health care professions. I’m in favor of anything that gives PCAs the professional regard they deserve. But it occurred to me that we don’t give much thought to training the people who actually receive PCA services. We don’t advise people on the best methods for training their attendants. We don’t give them suggestions on how to make hiring or firing decisions. In other words, we treat them as passive recipients of a service rather than active participants in their own care.
Wouldn’t it make sense to focus training efforts on both sides of the equation: the PCA and the person with a disability (or their family)? Doing so would probably create better outcomes for everyone involved. Plenty of states, including Minnesota, are moving towards a more person-centered support system for people with disabilities. But doing so is going to require a wholesale change in our traditional (which is to say, patronizing) views of disability.
I promise: no more policy wonk posts for the rest of the week.
I think education for the consumer of the service would be very smart. I know my father put up with a very bad PCA because he was worried about who would take her place. My mother and I only found out what had been going on after she quit (thank goodness she did so fairly quickly). His next PCA was wonderful and is now a good friend of my mother’s (my dad died in February).