Advocates urge more help for places like St. Joseph's Center

Apr. 25--Stephen Opsasnick can't visit his 26-year-old son, Mark, at St. Joseph's Center since the doors closed to visitors to protect residents from COVID-19.

Opsasnick, who typically visits Mark during the week and brings him home on Sundays, is relying on the center's direct support personnel to care for Mark.

"The care that he gets, it's basically lifesaving," he said. "We're just fortunate."

Representatives from St. Joseph's Center listened to the Pennsylvania Advocacy and Resources for Autism and Intellectual Disability's virtual news conference Friday to urge Gov. Tom Wolf and the state Legislature to help protect the 50,000 Pennsylvanians with intellectual disability or autism and the 55,000 direct support professionals, or DSPs, during the pandemic. They called for increased funding for organizations that provide care and to classify those professionals as "essential workers" under the state's stay-at-home order.

The state sets the compensation rates for organizations like St. Joseph's Center and the Arc of Northeastern Pennsylvania. Those organizations serve the local population of people with intellectual disabilities and autism through a variety of full-time and day programs.

The rates are not adequate for the services provided, said Maryalice Jacquinot, I.H.M., president/CEO of the center.

St. Joseph's DSPs who work at the main center on Adams Avenue in Scranton or at 14 full-time community homes in Lackawanna and Luzerne counties visit clients daily, a few times a week or are available 24 hours a day. Typically, they accompany clients into the community and assist them at work or at home. They also care for the 145 clients, including Mark, who live at the main center.

"The nature of what they do is very personal, very intimate and violates social distancing. How else do you help someone get food in their mouth?" Jacquinot said.

But now the DSPs have become the clients' contact to the world, said Audrey Slocum, a unit manager and former DSP at St. Joseph's.

"We're doing video chats with parents and grandparents," she said. "We're the ones getting them up and making sure they get their breakfast and lunch and dinner."

She said St. Joseph's has been understanding and appreciative during the crisis and provided a bonus for shifts worked.

The center has no reported cases of COVID-19 and started precautionary measures before the state put them in place, she said. In early March, St. Joseph's began limiting clients' access to the community.

"The DSPs are the front line," Slocum said.

Mark Opsasnick has Down syndrome and has been nonverbal since birth, said his father, a physician at Moses Taylor Hospital. In 2012, he suffered a critical illness and has lived at St. Joseph's Center ever since. The center's DSPs provide full care for Mark, who has a feeding tube and tractotomy -- surgical division of a nerve tract -- and is confined to a bed or wheelchair.

"They are truly essential personnel," he said. "It's so important that people who are providing that kind of front-line care, in a facility like St. Joseph's, are recognized how they should be in terms of their compensation and having the proper PPE ... especially during this crisis."

The clients miss their families, Jacquinot said.

Both the center and the Arc of Northeastern Pennsylvania shut down their day programs when schools and day care centers closed.

"Many of the folks we serve are extremely vulnerable. Many have medical conditions that could be considered a risk should they be exposed," said Maryclaire Kretsch, Arc executive director.

Of the organization's 12 group homes, one was recently quarantined for two presumed cases of COVID-19.

The press conference also called for more personal protective equipment for the DSPs.

"We've had trouble getting our hands on PPE," said Kretsch, who noted that DSPs disinfect themselves at stations before going into the home.

More than 300 people, including state Sen. John Blake, D-22, Archbald, signed up to sit in and participate in Friday's press conference.

He said the DSPs aren't being overlooked, but rather it's the level of urgency with nurses and doctors who are on the front lines of the pandemic.

"We, as lawmakers, need to take this case in a nonpartisan way to the Wolf administration and to DHS," he said. "This is an element of our safety net and it involves tens of thousands of Pennsylvania workers who do extraordinary work. They need to be appreciated in this process as we move federal money to the street."

Contact the writer:

kbolus@timesshamrock.com;

570-348-9100 x5114;

@kbolusTT on Twitter

___

(c)2020 The Times-Tribune (Scranton, Pa.)

Visit The Times-Tribune (Scranton, Pa.) at thetimes-tribune.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.