By Angelique Goyet
Published on
–
“We are somewhat forgetting home help in this health crisis. »It was the cry of the heart of Jean-Vincent Brianceau, head of service agency andhome help in the Morbihan in April 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic was in full swing.
One year after first confinement, it takes stock of a particular year 2020 and a year 2021 which promises to be just as complicated. “We were in need of masks at the time, today we are in tension on gloves“, Launches the director of the Domidom agency in Pontivy, in Central Brittany.
From what he found, the price of gloves tripled: “I was paying nine euros for 200 gloves. Today it’s eight euros for 100 gloves, and it got worse a few months ago. “
The problem of the lack of masks for Domidom’s home helpers was solved with the help of the Morbihan departmental council. For gloves, you have to take your trouble patiently, while this equipment was part of the panoply of these employees long before the pandemic …
The over-equipment of home helpers explodes the budget
Getting equipped with new health protection equipment, the basics in order to be able to send the 40 employees to the homes of 200 to 300 monthly customers in Morbihan.
The health crisis has doubled our budget. For example, during an intervention at a Covid case client, the home help must put on protective glasses, an FFP2 mask which costs € 1.30, gowns, overshoes, not to mention the usual equipment, gloves , mask, hydroalcoholic gel.
Positive cases of Covid-19 among customers, Jean-Vincent Brianceau counted three for sure, “perhaps more at the very beginning of the epidemic, but there was no test at the time” , out of 300 monthly customers.
As for home helpers, “there were two Covid cases very recently, out of 40 employees in one year. These are the variants that worry us at the moment, which are more contagious ”. In Morbihan, it is the English variant whose spread has worried the authorities since mid-February 2021.
We cannot stop intervening with people, our majority public is elderly, very dependent, these are the people at risk of the pandemic. It happens that we provide the mask to our customers when the home helpers are at home. When there is proximity between people, the mask is necessary.
As for the health protocol, it has continued to evolve over the course of the health crisis. “We have protocols for our employees, for our customers. When there is a contact case, we test: the test reassures but contributes to the ambient disaster at the same time … If it is an employee contact case, we warn our customers and their families. “
“Thanks to the pandemic, home help is better considered”
The year 2021 and its uncertainties about the health context will not facilitate the task of home helpers. But Jean-Vincent Brianceau still retains a positive point: a better consideration of the profession by the authorities.
We felt a change of outlook between the two confinements: the pandemic highlighted the work of home help professionals, which concerns a lot of people in France who want to age at home. Without maintenance and care at home, all these people would be in structures, would block hospitals because of the pandemic.
“The profession of home help is not a siding”
Jean-Vincent Brianceau hopes for another positive effect of the pandemic on home help: an enhancement of the profession.
Home helpers do a great job that makes sense, it is not a siding. People who don’t do the trick don’t stay long. They are professionals who must be autonomous, have good interpersonal skills, have common sense. With the health crisis, relationships are less natural, it does not promote contact but we saw great things in doing this job: customers are grateful to home helpers and say it is good for the esteem of self.
A long-awaited autonomy law
Like many personal assistance professionals, he impatiently awaits the creation of the fifth branch of Social Security, that of autonomy. The bill has been under debate since June 2020 and seems to be in limbo at the start of 2021.
A branch that will manage the expenses related to the autonomy of the elderly and the disabled. Management currently split between various institutions (departments, etc.).
For Jean-Vincent Brianceau, this will benefit home helpers: “We need this national policy, so that as an employer, we can raise their salaries, among other things. Our margins are not huge in home help, which is a sector under pressure with specific working conditions (travel time, part-time, multi-employer, etc.). “
–
