Due to a shift to the private sector, 600 home care workers under Alabama’s Department of Public Health will lose their jobs at the end of this fiscal year, according to a report from Alabama online news publication AL.com.
The state’s health department will discontinue its participation as a service provider for its Elderly and Disabled Medicaid Waiver program, the report states, which provides services for people in their homes to prevent the need for moves to nursing homes and other types of institutionalized care.
Roughly 600 care workers are employed by the program, which will instead employ a private source of staffing for the program following a $2 million increase in budget to provide the staffing through private contracts.
“The waiver is not going away. The services are not going away,” State Health Officer Don Williamson told AL.com. Additionally, the department said it would submit the names of its home care providers to the private contractors in hopes they can find new jobs.
The workers who will be impacted are only those under the waiver program, AL.com reports, which serves about 8,000 people statewide.
Written by Elizabeth Ecker
