“We hold it together with hopes and dreams and duct tape. But I think that anybody on the outside that was looking in would say ‘what the heck is this mess you made?’ We’re just taking pieces from wherever you can find support and hobbling it together so that I can stay home and live outside a facility.”
That’s Andy Thain, who spoke at a press conference yesterday about how the shortage of at-home caregivers in Wisconsin has affected his life. The event was put on by the Survival Coalition, a group of organizations across the state advocating for people with disabilities, to release the results of their latest survey of caregivers in Wisconsin.
The survey asked people with disabilities, their family members, and caregivers themselves, about the current state of the caregiver industry in Wisconsin. The survey received around 300 responses.
Tamara Jackson, Legislative Liaison with the Wisconsin Board for People with Developmental Disabilities, says that the results are grim.
“The biggest jump for us is the number of people who are saying ‘I am worried that I will be forced out of my home, not because I can’t live their independently, but because I can’t get the workers to support me at the level I need,’” Jackson says. “(They say) ‘if I am forced into a facility, which itself has a shortage of workers, I may not be able to get back out.”
62% of people with disabilities who responded to the survey said that they are worried that they won’t be able to stay in their home if...
On 30 April 2026, DOJ announced a new anti-fraud initiative: the Fraud Oversight through Careful Use of Statistics (FOCUS) initiative. The FOCUS initiative is intended to strengthen DOJ’s working ...