The Experiences of Workers Hired Under Consumer Direction in ...

workers held jobs other than caregiving, compared with 20 percent of agency workers. Finally,more directly hired workers than agency workers were members of the same racial or ethnicgroup as the consumer they cared for (91 percent and 80 percent, respectively); this difference islikely due to the fact that most directly hired workers were relatives.D. RESULTSIn the following examination of the employment experiences of directly hired workers, weuse the experiences of agency workers as a benchmark. However, because most directly hiredworkers were relatives or friends of the consumer and were providing care informally before thedemonstration began, their experiences are likely to be different from those of agency workers.Indeed, prior to the demonstration, 95 percent of directly hired workers knew the consumer, and84 percent were providing informal care to the consumer. The most common reason that theseinformal caregivers gave for becoming paid workers was that it was “an opportunity to be paidfor tasks that I had already been doing.” After the demonstration began, most directly hiredworkers continued to provide large amounts of unpaid care to the consumer, in addition to thehours they were paid for. In short, the experiences of directly hired workers may be more similarto those of informal caregivers than to those of agency workers. A companion report (Fosteret al. 2003b) compares the outcomes of the predemonstration primary informal caregivers whobecame paid workers to those who did not become paid.1. Hours of Care ProvidedAlthough directly hired workers were paid for some hours of care that they provided in thetwo weeks preceding the interview, most also provided unpaid care. In fact, 74 percent ofdirectly hired workers provided at least some unpaid care (Table 2). The average directly hired13