Group homes seek donations for frontline staff
BY BEN VERDE
A Staten Island group home is soliciting
donations for its staffers, who
have had to transform into frontline
medical workers almost overnight,
management said.
“Our staff has been unbelievably
amazing,” said Joanne Gerenser, executive
director of Eden II programs,
which runs a network of support services
for people with autism on Staten
Island.
According to Gerenser, the pandemic
has overturned the daily tasks of
the direct service providers that care
for the residents of the group homes.
Eight of Eden II’s residents have tested
positive for the coronavirus, Gerenser
said, but all have managed to stay out
of the hospital — which has turned the
residential facilities into around-theclock
care centers.
“Our nurses need to receive some
kind of medals of honor,” Gerenser
said.
Staff are tasked with looking after
restless participants and providing
them with structure for hours on end
while they are unable to go outside —
a nearly herculean task, according to
Gerenser, a speech pathologist.
“I used to do these 30-minute sessions,
and making sure that your session
provided structure so that your
session went well, sometimes was really
challenging,” she said. “I sit there
sometimes at my desk and I think
about these direct care workers, who
have to now provide structure 16 hours
in a row, in a house, often not able to go
anywhere — it just boggles my mind.”
Direct service providers in group
homes make little more than minimum
wage due to a decade of budget
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cuts from the state that have left most
homes treading water even before the
pandemic hit.
“They’re not paid for the pandemic,”
said Sarah Collins, a Brooklyn
native whose brother Joey lives in an
Eden II home. “They’re basically working
as health care providers but have
not been given any formal training
prior to this.”
The staff at Eden II have had to dip
into their own bank accounts to replace
clothing destroyed by bleach after
disinfecting themselves, according
to Collins.
The fundraiser, which has netted
roughly $16,000 toward its goal of
$20,000 as of April 29, aims to soften
that blow, and provide the workers
with the hazard pay their employers
are unable to give them. They have
also received support from Fare it Forward,
a fundraising effort that aims
to provide frontline workers with free
transit fares.
“Most of our direct care workers
are making just above minimum wage,
and the idea that we’ve now asked them
to become healthcare workers and put
them in really complicated situations,
it just doesn’t feel right that we’re not
able to provide them with some type of
increased money,” said Gerenser.
With the state budget full of austerity
measures, group homes can only expect
more funding cuts, Gerenser said,
so fundraising may be the only route
workers have to an increase in pay.
“The only way we’re going to be
able to get money in the hands of our
workers and thank them for what they
are doing is through fundraisers like
this, so it’s been very rewarding seeing
how many people are stepping up,” she
said.
Staff at an Eden II facility. Courtesy of Eden II
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