Paying these folks minimum wage could REDUCE wages of some of the home healthcare workers! Some agencies pay a home healthcare aid $10-12 per hour.
As far as ‘’maid service’’ goes, in many places this type of service is contract labor in the sense that the householder pays what the house keeper charges like you would a plumber. If you don’t like the price, hire someone else.
I resent the article listed with the OP for implying that this type of work is ‘’idiot’s work’’ (ideal for foreigners or the uneducated). He goes on to imply that people who stay at home are lazy druggies. His ignorance is glaring.
A Lazy drug addict may be the kind of person HIS mother was, but to imply that at home folks do nothing but watch tv or do drugs makes HIM an uneducated idiot. Any monkey can bang a keyboard too and probably come out with more logic than the author of that website has.
You have to know solvents..what to mix, what not to mix. What types of solvents work on what types of surfaces, and what types of solvents cause damage to those surfaces. If a person has certain health issues are there chemicals that you don’t use in their presence?
You have to know proper sanitization procedures..for example, you don’t wash the inside of the toilet with the same rag that you later wash the sink with. And you certainly don’t use said rag to turn around and was the dishes! Obvious to some, but not to others.
Proper lifting procedures is crucial before hurting yourself or your client.
Proper body washing techniques, and what are the limits of your expertise?
How do you wash a pair of jeans covered in automotive oils and grease to make them look like they just came off the store rack yesterday? Some people demand this level of quality and you have to know how to supply it.
Oh, they want you to help water the gardens? What kinds of plants demand a lot of water, or just a little, or none at all? How do you know what mixtures of gas or oils to use in a particular piece of machinery necessary to do the job they hired you to do?
The level of knowledge required can vary from job to job and place to place but you can’t send someone from a third world country whose used to peeing in a hole in the floor and who isn’t used to washing hands after toileting into an acute healthcare situation without risking serious infections.
Sometimes the client is fresh from the hospital after serious, debilitating illness and surgery and the last thing you want to do is put that person at risk for getting worse.
Sometimes you have mental health clients who are totally obsessive to the point where they pick the hairs out of their heads because one happened to fall out, while others are germaphobes who expect you to wash dishes wearing white gloves...I mean to say, you never know what you’ll encounter so you’d better NOT be an uneducated ignoramus as some people seem to think.
Thank you for your thoughtful post. You have illuminated what is involved with home care and needed capabilities. Great.