From Across Generations: Care Stories from Student Part Two

As part of the Caring Across Generations campaign, the Student Labor Action Project is proud to present a series of care stories from students.

These stories not only show the true human impact of homecare in the country, but also that it is an issue that is not relegated to the elderly or adults.

Submit your own care story here.

The second story in the series comes from University of California at Santa Cruz student Erica Ayón. Erica is starting her third year at UCSC and is studying Physical Anthropology and Politics.

Here is her story.

“My grandma lived with poor health conditions for as long as I can remember.As her diabetes and osteoporosis worsened, our family decided that we needed extra help to care for her. We made the decision to hire an in-home support services care worker, Rosa, to care for her 6 hours a day, four times per week. Our family couldn’t always give my grandma the attention she deserved because my mother and her four sisters work full-time and care for their own families.

While they were away at work, we had complete trust in Rosa that she would take care of all of my grandma’s needs. Rosa helped my grandma with so much, from daily exercising to cooking meals for her, and keeping up her hygiene. My grandma was not able to care for herself and she became very attached to Rosa, as Rosa treated her as if she were her own family member. If it were not for Rosa we would probably have had to put my grandma in a convalescent home. Thankfully we were able to hire Rosa when we needed her the most. All of our family appreciates her services very very much.”

Share your own story and help to change how we care in this country.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 5th, 2012 at 3:03 pm. It is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.