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BOSTON (State House News Service) - Human services providers are feeling a staffing shortage, they told legislators Tuesday, attributing high turnover and negative effects on vulnerable clients to current payment and reimbursement rates that can hold agencies back from offering competitive salaries.
"As you've been hearing, the biggest challenge is the staffing crisis," NFI Massachusetts Executive Director Lydia Todd told the Joint Committee on Children, Families and Persons With Disabilities.
Cynthia Reed, who lives in Greater Boston and has a son served by Nashoba Learning Group, said that a "difficulty in attracting and retaining staff, post-COVID, to work with my son has limited his opportunities to return to the community activities."
And it's current "inadequate" pay rates that have "led to a workforce crisis," Sam Carroll of Nashoba Learning Group said.
Committee members heard testimony on a proposal to eliminate pay disparities between human service workers and comparable workers employed by state-run programs by increasing state reimbursement rates (H 191 / S 84). A separate bill deals with Department of Developmental Services and MassHealth payment rates and would boost salary allowances for direct care and direct-support workers to the 75th percentile of comparable jobs in Massachusetts (H 171 / S 83).
Todd, from NFI Massachusetts, said that college graduates look for jobs paying a minimum of $50,000 per year, or around $24 per hour.
"We're currently paying our staff $20 an hour, which is more than what we are funded for, just because no one will even apply for a job for a rate less than $20 an hour. Amazon pays $20.75 an hour in our area," said Todd, whose multi-service agency is in northeastern Massachusetts.
Kelly Hutton of the Center of Hope Foundation said that, given current MassHealth rates, her organization can afford to pay a starting rate of $15 per hour -- the state's minimum wage -- to new direct-support professionals.
Hutton described demanding jobs where workers "at times have to respond to a variety of crisis situations where they may be yelled at or assaulted by members in distress." On top of that, "the staff are some of the main supporters and trusted people in the program members' lives," she said.
"All for $15 an hour," said Hutton. "Can you imagine all this responsibility for this rate of pay?"
The committee also heard about the effect that staff churn and vacancies have on clients.
Todd's agency serves adolescents, and she said constant staff turnover "reinforces a poor sense of self-worth" in the kids and "causes the child to become committed to their view that everyone abandons them."
Challenging A Licensure Threshold
State social workers also made a workforce-related argument to the committee, as they called for elimination of a standardized testing requirement for licensure.
The state "need[s] to remove the barriers for people of color to become social workers," SEIU Local 509 officer Jean Calvert McClure said, to address what she said was a stark imbalance of majority-white social workers providing state services to disproportionately more people of color.
Calvert McClure, who works at the Department of Mental Health, said that standardized tests "privilege white candidates" and spoke up for a bill filed by Rep. James O'Day and Sen. Adam Gomez (H 208 / S 93) that would grant provisional licenses to people who take the social work exam at least two times and fail within 15 points. During a provisional year, the licensee would "complete professional development, supervisory and educational requirements" and then be exempted from future testing.
Kenia Villa said she is an ongoing social worker at the Department of Children and Families who is preparing to take a licensure exam for the fourth time.
"Financially it can be a burden, as the department only pays for the first exam, and it can take a toll also on your mental health," Villa said. She added that she might benefit more from a certified course or other alternative certification, since the existing exam "covers ... maybe a tenth of what we do" and working in the field "is an ongoing learning platform for all us workers."
The CEO of the Virginia-based Association of Social Work Boards, Dr. Stacey Hardy-Chandler, appeared in person at the State House to oppose the bill and called "workforce ... the right issue" but said "exams are the wrong target."
"I want my doctor to take a test. I want my teacher to take an exam," Hardy-Chandler said, adding that entry-to-practice competence tests "bring legitimacy."
The association's regulatory services director, Jennifer Henkel, said the state's exam is not just for DCF social workers -- it measures competency for social workers at hospitals, universities, and schools, too.
"So workforce shortages at DCF are overly-specific to what the exam is created for and measures," Henkel said.
Hardy-Chandler told the committee that the focus in boosting the social work sector should be on areas like working conditions and pay rates.
Child Care For The Homeless
In an average year, around 600 young children are in Boston shelters, Mayor Michelle Wu told the committee Tuesday as she made her case for "a systemic fix" to get immediate child care vouchers to homeless families.
Wu said families placed in shelters currently face an administrative and procedural waiting period of around 30 days to receive child care vouchers, making it possible for families to fall through the cracks.
"In those 30 days, it's challenging, if not impossible, for families to fully devote their attention to finding housing, work, or educational opportunities, as they are applying for the process to get the vouchers to be able to have child care to do all those things," said the mayor.
The Rep. Marjorie Decker bill (H 147) would make certain families immediately eligible for homeless child care assistance vouchers when they arrive at the shelter. It would also change early intervention eligibility, Wu said, for qualifying children living in shelters.
"If this legislation passes, at the city level we'll be able to use our current resources earlier and more effectively, to meet the needs of our most vulnerable young children, and prevent costly, damaging, and destabilizing outcomes for families across our city," Wu said.
Written By Sam Doran/SHNS
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