Hoping to reduce employee turnover, the state Department of Human Services is requesting double-digit pay increases for direct-care staff members at the state's institutions for the developmentally disabled.
Under the department's proposal, the annual starting pay for care workers at the five human development centers would increase about 18%, from $22,000 to $26,034.
Pay for supervisors would also increase, with starting pay for the highest-level direct-care staff members going up almost 12%, from $32,405 to $36,155.
The department also would offer free training for employees to become certified nursing assistants and would require all of the centers' more than 1,200 direct-care staff members to achieve the certification by the end of December.
The centers' 100 support staff members, such as kitchen and maintenance workers, also would be allowed to take the training at no charge.
Melissa Stone, director of the department's Division of Developmental Disabilities Services, said she's hoping the proposed changes would reduce an annual turnover rate that averages more than 100% across the five centers, which house about 900 residents in Conway, Jonesboro, Arkadelphia, Booneville and Warren.
Currently, direct-care and support staff members make the same starting pay.
In some areas, "you can get paid that same hourly rate to work at a fast food restaurant," Stone said.
"We're having an enormously hard time just keeping people from leaving because it's hard work," she said.
"It's a real demanding job, and people just don't want to do it for that salary range."
That turnover, she added, "is not good for our clients," many of whom have medical conditions or mental illness in addition to their developmental disabilities.
"They need consistent staff that know them," she said.
Stone said she also hopes the changes would give employees "a sense of pride that they are licensed or certified in a profession, and then they're able to grow a career ladder from there as well."
Currently, new workers complete a two-week training course that includes many of the components of the nursing assistant training -- which will take two and a half weeks -- but they don't receive certificates, Stone said.
Even without the department's proposal, the starting pay for direct-care workers and support staff members are subject to a required increase on Jan. 1, when the state's minimum wage goes from $10 an hour to $11 an hour as a result of an initiative approved by voters in 2018.
The pay for the centers' 125 licensed practical nurses also would increase under a proposed revision to the pay schedule for such nurses across state agencies. All nurses would receive an increase of at least 1% under the proposal, which sets starting pay for nurses according to their years of experience. Starting pay for the nurses is now $36,155 a year.
The human development center pay increases and training, which must be approved by the Legislature, would cost a total of about $4.7 million.
About 70% of the cost would come from federal Medicaid funds, Stone said.
Stone said that because of cost-cutting measures at the centers, her division can pay for the salary increases and training without increasing its annual budget of about $162 million.
Thomas Nichols, legal director for Disability Rights Arkansas, said members of his group "always hate to see throwing more money at institutional settings as opposed to community settings."
But he said he hopes the changes will lead to fewer incidents of abuse by staff members at the centers.
The advocacy organization has federal authority to investigate the treatment of people with disabilities.
"I do think there are many devoted staff there, direct-care staff there, who are not CNAs," Nichols said. "At the same time, I feel like if you required staff to meet a certain professional standard, you should receive a higher quality of care."
A Section on 03/09/2020