CARING FOR AMERICA: How Home Care Workers Are Changing the Face of American Labor

Eileen Boris and Jennifer Klein

"She is the face of home care: For forty-seven years, single mother Evelyn Hawks has looked after her developmentally disabled daughter, Hester Brown. A former data entry operator, Hawks, who is African American, provides the kind of care her adult child requires under California’s In Home Supportive Services (IHSS) program, which pays for her efforts. The work is hard, the income just enough to rent a tiny one-bedroom apartment in central Los Angeles. But Hawks says that the sacrifice is worth keeping her daughter out of an institution. Shortly after taking office in 2003, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger attempted to balance the state budget by eliminating personal attendant services for children like Hester when a parent rather than a stranger performs the labor of care. A coalition of disability rights activists, organized seniors, and trade unionists beat back his assault on IHSS." - CARING FOR AMERICA: How Home Care Workers Are Changing the Face of American Labor

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