It’s more than a job for nursing assts.

PATIENTS PAYING OFF: Homefront Health Care certified nursing assistant Margarita Feliciano works with a patient. She entered the field in 2011 after being laid off from her banking job. / PBN PHOTO/MARTIN GAVIN
PATIENTS PAYING OFF: Homefront Health Care certified nursing assistant Margarita Feliciano works with a patient. She entered the field in 2011 after being laid off from her banking job. / PBN PHOTO/MARTIN GAVIN

When she was one of 15 bank employees laid off from her job processing transactions on customer accounts, 52-year-old Margarita Feliciano decided to go back to the work she enjoyed when she was in her 20s – taking care of patients in their homes.
“To me, it’s my calling,” said Feliciano, who completed the certified-nursing-assistant training at Crossroads Rhode Island in 2011, got her license and was quickly hired by Homefront Health Care in Providence.
“At the bank, I was working mostly on the phone and the computer,” she said. Now her work is much more mobile and varied.
“I like going from home to home. It’s more one-on-one and you have the opportunity to know your patient very well,” Feliciano said. “There are a lot of patients who are ill at all different ages and they need different kinds of assistance.”
Her youngest patient was a 6-year-old boy with a disability. One of her current patients had a stroke and uses a cane. She helps him with some range-of-motion movements, prepares meals and does household tasks like washing dishes.
“There’s a lot of opportunity in the CNA field, if you’re willing to work,” Feliciano said.
With Rhode Island’s unemployment rate of 8.8 percent stubbornly above the national rate of 7.5 percent, home-care agencies say CNA jobs are plentiful after training and licensing. They report average starting-wage ranges from $10-$13 an hour, with increases up to a few additional dollars relatively quickly with experience and good job performance.
Those who are willing to work during hard-to-fill evening and weekend times have even more opportunity to add up hours at slightly higher wages.
“It’s hard work and not everyone is cut out to be a CNA,” said Bob Caffrey, president and CEO of Homefront Health Care, a nonprofit with six offices in Rhode Island and 350 employees, of which 250 are CNAs. Employees often have a choice of the lower end of the pay scale in exchange for medical and other benefits, he said.
“Being a CNA takes internal skills. You have to have a lot of empathy as well as a thick skin,” Caffrey said. “You’re dealing with people at a time they’re losing their health and their independence. “CNA’s have to deal with family dynamics and pets. We don’t control the setting,” he said. “We prepare our CNAs as much as possible when they get a new client, but whatever they find when they walk up to the door, and the door opens, they have to deal with it.”
Homefront Health Care offers a CNA training program four times a year and graduates a total about 100 CNAs annually.
Up until recently, the program received substantial funding from the United Way and the training cost of about $1,000 per person was covered. Homefront usually had several hundred applicants for 25 spots in the funded training. That made it competitive.
“We do a literacy test and an interview and from that we make our class selection,” Caffrey said. “We’re shooting for diversity, cultural and geographic, because we have offices from Woonsocket to Westerly.”
“Unfortunately, the training we’re doing now is the last one we’re doing under the United Way funding,” said Caffrey, whose understanding of the change is that the United Way now prefers a different model for a CNA program.
Funding for CNA training is also shrinking at Crossroads Rhode Island, which provides temporary shelter and a range of social services for homeless individuals and families.
“A good portion of the training money has come from the Department of Labor and Training and a lot of that has gone away. That’s had an impact on the number of students we can train in our CNA program,” said Karen Santilli, vice president of marketing and development for Crossroads Rhode Island.
“Of all the training programs Crossroads has done, the CNA program is the most successful because there is such a demand,” Santilli said. In the 15 years Crossroads has been training CNAs, the vast majority are women, but a handful of men do take the training, she said.
Crossroads offers the training seven times a year and graduates about 90 CNAs over that time period.
“CNA training can be a steppingstone to becoming an LPN or RN,” said Santilli. “And not only are jobs available for CNAs, it’s a livable wage and there are flexible hours, especially for single parents.” That’s one major advantage that convinced Ana Melo of East Providence to take CNA training. She was hit by job cuts at the bank where she worked for seven years in sales and customer service.
“My department closed and I had to go on unemployment. It’s hard being a single mom,” said Melo, who took her training and got licensed in 2011 and works for Visiting Angels, which provides home care for the elderly.
The change from a 9-to-5 office schedule to the flexibility of home care was most welcome.
“I can work different schedules around my kids,” said Melo, whose children are 5, 13, 15 and 20 years old.
“They’re always hiring CNA’s and I don’t have time to be looking for a job. I wanted a career where I could always find a job,” she said.
Melo’s enthusiasm for her career filtered down to her 20-year-old daughter, who just became a CNA.
Melo first thought about being a CNA when she went to visit a friend’s grandfather in the hospital.
“When people get older and can’t do everything they used to do, they just need someone who cares for them and will pay attention to them,” said Melo.
“It’s not just a job. I love it,” said Melo. “It can be a little difficult sometimes, but I wouldn’t change it. You go home feeling good because you helped someone.”
The demand for CNAs has been so strong that Reginald Bastien left a career working with high-speed Internet to open Bastien Academy in East Providence. His wife is a nurse, so he had a close-up view of the need for well-trained CNAs.
Bastien Academy’s CNA training course of 120 hours can be done in about five weeks. The school has been open for five years and graduates 60 to 100 CNAs a year.
“Some people are training to eventually become LPNs or RNs. Some are coming to renew their CNA certification. Some are changing careers,” Bastien said.
“I don’t know of any other field where you can come in within a month after you finish a program and earn $13 an hour and in about six months it can go up to $18 an hour,” Bastien said. “I would say that 100 percent of the students who graduate from our program and want to work will find work within one month of graduating.” •

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