Home health care worker and nursing care facility worker vs. family caregiver

Family caregiver compared to home health care worker and nursing care facility worker.

Home health care services
Earnings: weekly $415.12 Hourly $14.41 Hours worked per week 28.8

Nursing and residential care facilities
Earnings: weekly $393.58 Hourly $12.05 Hours worked per week 32.7

Part-time Family care provider
Earnings: weekly $0.00 Hourly $0.00 Hours worked per week 28.8

Full-time Family Caregiver
Earnings: weekly $0.00 Hourly $0.00 Hours worked per week 168.0

If a home health care nurse did the same job that a family caregiver does, the home health care nurse would be paid $2,420.88 per week. Limits of an 8 hour work day 5 days a week and we have $1,152.80 per week that a home health care provider would make for taking on less than half the duties of a family caregiver.

Right now only a few states will allow for a family caregiver to be paid for providing care, and those states require the care recipient to be on Medicaid.

A worker in a residential care facility does not even have to be a nurse. Most of the staff in those facilities do not even have CPR certification. One care facility, that I recall being in the news not very long ago, was hiring 16 year old girls to work for them and had no actual nurse on staff.

Why is there no assistance programs for family caregivers?


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Source for statistics on pay for home health care services and nursing and residential care facilities - U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Office of Occupational Statistics and Employment Projections