"GOOD HELP" IN ST. PETERSBURG

Health Progress, Jan/Feb 2005 by Stovall, Sr Carol E

Bon Secours Helped Fund a, Florida Collaborative That Provides Refugees with Both Work and Health Care

Thank you. Through this course in assistant nursing you have given us a valuable tool that allows us not just to exercise an occupation in this country, but also to serve, kelp, and touch the lives of many people who need us due to their ailments or advanced age.

-Gloria Talero, a CNA from Colombia

The Refugee Healthcare Partnership (RHP) is a collaborative effort intended to help refugees in the Tampa Bay area of Florida. The idea behind the RHP emerged from a fall 2000 meeting at which representatives of CHA, Catholic Charities USA, and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops's Migration and Refugee Services (USCCB/MRS) agreed to launch a pilot project to "provide necessary health services and meaningful employment opportunities that foster well-being and increase sustainable independence for refugees in caring communities." The Tampa Bay area, they agreed, would be the project's site.

The RHP was founded in 2001 by representatives of seven local organizations: Bon Secours Maria Manor, a 274-bed nursing and rehabilitation facility in St. Petersburg; Catholic Charities of the Diocese of St. Petersburg*; the Refugee Employment Program of Lutheran Services of Florida; the BayCare Health System, a 14-member organization that includes St. Anthony's Hospital, St. Petersburg, and St. Joseph's Hospital, Tampa; the Pinellas Technical Education Centers (PTEC), a two-campus technical school operated by the Pinellas County School System; the Hillsborough County School District's CARIBE Program, which provides refugees with language, GED, and vocational training; and the Florida Department of Children and Families (for the partnership's current members, see Box, p. 34).

"GOOD HELP" FROM BON SECOURS

Formation of the RH P was spearheaded by the late Mary Odette[double dagger], then director of mission at Bon Secours Maria Manor, and Patricia Frederick[double dagger], then the Pinellas County director of Catholic Charities of the Diocese of St. Petersburg. They were assisted by Sr. Patricia Shirley, OSF, director of mission integration at St. Joseph's Hospital.

In September 2001, Bon Secours Maria Manor submitted to the Bon Secours Mission Fund an application for a grant with which to finance the RHP project. Bon Secours Health System, Marriottsville, MD, has as its mission bringing compassion to health care and to be "good help" to those in need, especially the poor and the dying. The Bon Secours Mission Fund is one means of fulfilling this mission. Begun in 1998, the fund (as its mission statement says) looks for "innovative, collaborative initiatives that promote the development of holistic health and well-being, particularly for disenfranchised and marginalized people in communities served by Bon Secours."

The RHP, as the grant application noted, would be a collaborative of local service providers offering "health services and employment training to refugees that reside in Hillsborough and Pinellas Counties of Florida." The Bon Secours Mission Fund agreed to give the project $80,000 for its initial year. The RHP was under way.

THE CHALLENGES

Its sendees were clearly needed. The RHP faced two challenges. One was the refugees themselves. According to the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service's Statistical Yearbook for fiscal year 1998, Florida had more refugees and "asylees" (asylum seekers) granted lawful permanent resident status than any other state in the nation.1 Because Florida's refugees automatically lose their Medicaid coverage after eight months, many had no health insurance.

The other problem was that Pinellas and Hillsborough counties, like the rest of Florida, were experiencing a shortage of nursing personnel in their long-term care facilities.

Florida was not alone in this respect. "High vacancy and turnover rates of key frontline nursing personnel contribute to the underlying fragility of the nation's long-term care workforce," argues Charles Roadman, president of the American Health Care Association (AHCA), a long-term care advocacy group.2 An AHCA survey of administrators at more than 16,000 nursing facilities revealed a need, Roadman said, "for public policy initiatives directed towards recruiting, training and retraining America's skilled nursing workforce-particularly frontline caregivers, who provide as much as 80 percent of direct patient care." Most of the direct, hands-on resident care in nursing homes is done by certifled nursing assistants (CNAs). In 2002, 52,000 of the 96,000 full-time openings in long-term care facilities were for CNAs.3 Oklahoma's turnover rate for CNAs was 135.5 percent, the highest in the nation; Hawaii's 20.7 percent was the lowest rate.4 Florida's turnover rate was 61 percent.

EARLY EFFORTS

RHP leaders reasoned that by training refugees to be CNAs, they could help solve both challenges-case the local CNA shortage and provide refugees with jobs whose benefits included health insurance.