History
Cooperative Home Care Associates (CHCA)sponsored the creation of PHI in 1991 to develop new programs and conduct policy research and analysis consistent with CHCA’s Quality Care through Quality Jobs model.
After ten years of operations, it became clear to CHCA and PHI that the current fee-for-service home care system was not designed to place home care aides and consumers at its core. Implementing the Quality Care through Quality Jobs model meant continuously stretching the system’s limits, but an alternative structure was needed.
Through our policy advocacy work we had learned that adults with physical disabilities are virtually ignored in our health care system, much like home care aides. Moreover, for many adults with physical disabilities the home care aide is their “lifeline” – the critical difference between being able to remain at home or go into a nursing home.
CHCA and PHI began planning in 1995, to develop ICS as an alternative model to address both consumer and direct care worker issues. Five years later, we opened our doors for operations in April, 2000. In the process, we entered another “world” in which adults with physical disabilities live every day – a world marked by inappropriate services and unnecessary barriers to quality care and adequate support to live independently.
Together, ICS, CHCA and PHI are working toward making both adults with physical disabilities and home care aides highly visible in New York City and, in the process, enabling them to get what they need – good care and support and good jobs.
