When longtime health care worker Michelle Hannum’s mother-in-law needed around-the-clock care, she knew she was the best person for the job.

“(She has) severe dementia, 100 percent incontinent and immobile. She’s 100 percent dependant, so it’s 24/7 care,”  Hannum explains. “Someone in our family  is always here, but I am  the primary caregiver.  I do have a couple of daughters here that step in as well. So I do have a good support system here at home so I am able to step out when I need to.”

Hannum, from Spokane, worked as a health care aide for a decade, in skilled nursing facilities, adult family care homes and as a Home Care Aide before she and her husband decided his mother should move in with them so Hannum could assume responsibility for her care.

“I got into this because I am a natural nurturer. Just having kids of my own … you just develop that nurturing state,” she says. “I figured I would be best at making money doing that.

“I find it very rewarding to bring joy to another person in a less fortunate situation, whether it’s medically, emotionally, financially. I’ve been in the caregiving field for about 12 years. I’ve worked in group homes and in adult family homes.”

“I’ve worked with the developmentally disabled.” She says she really prefers to work on-on-one with individual consumers, rather than in group settings.

“The group homes that I worked in were not as re-warding because it wasn’t so much one-on-one. I really decided that I like the time that I can spend one-on-one with a client, whether it’s family or just someone I’m taking care of. Just caring for their soul makes a tremendous difference in their lives.”

Two-and-a-half years ago, Hannum, a member of SEIU 775, made another change, taking on the job of caring for her mother-in-law, Ilene Hannum, as a Home Care Aide, through Washington state.

“The only way we can have her in her home is because I am a paid caregiver and can stay home,” she says. “If I had to go generate that income outside of the home, it wouldn’t work to have her here.”

Providing 24/7 care for her mother-in-law is not Hannum’s only full-time re-sponsibility. Now in her mid-40s, she has been married for the past 25 years and is raising two girls and two boys of her own, ranging in age from 14 to 22 years old.

She is also a full-time student at Spokane Community College, working to earn an AA degree. Thanks to a scholarship from the SEIU Healthcare NW Training Partnership she will be starting a Medical Assistant program at the community college beginning of 2012.

“I got an email, because I’m a caregiver in the union, stating they were going to award 10 scholarships. Really, it was an answer to my prayers because I’d already enrolled in school. The amazing thing is I get to start in January. I don’t have to wait – it just gets the ball rolling immediately for me.”

Hannum says she became interested in becoming a Medical Assistant after spending time with consumers (clients) approaching the end of their lives. “Seeing hospice come in, in several different instances, I realized there’s so much more to know out there, just about the physical part of the body,” she says.

“So I’ve recently taken an interest in that and wanting to further my education that way, and possibly see where that takes me. I am good at what I do but because I never pursued higher education, I have reached my max in responsibility and pay.”

Medical Assistants work with doctors in medical offices and clinics, doing a range of duties including greeting pa-tients, updating patient medical records and scheduling appointments as well as performing basic lab tests drawing blood, and preparing patients for examination.

The scholarships (10 were offered to members of SEIU 775 who are employed as Home Care Aides) are funded by a grant to the Washington Health Care Worker Training Coalition from the U.S. Department of Labor, paid for the through American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and administered by the Training Partnership.

Photo by Inye Wokoma

The scholarship will pay Hannum’s school expenses for five quarters, time enough to complete the Medical Assistant certificate program.

Although most students can finish in one year, she says recipients are given the extra time “to lighten the load a little bit because we’re all working.”

Because she had already completed the program’s prerequisites and taken other classes before getting the scholarship, Hannum will be just five credits short of completing her Associate’s degree, so she plans to take those after-ward.

She says she is confident that she can juggle all those responsibilities since the school is offering most of the program online. She will be on campus for a three-hour lab session one day a week, when her daughters will be available to take care of their grandmother, both of whom are fully trained in her care.

“While I’m working I get to do school as well as be home, so I just can’t even think of a better scenario to construct this,” Hannum says.

After finishing her schooling she expects to gain experience in the job working in a doctor’s office or clinic, though her long term goal is to find a place in a hospital setting where she can work nontraditional hours.

“I’m not necessarily looking for the perfect 8-to-5 job, just because my kids are older now and I’m more flexible,” she allows. “I just see myself more in a nontraditional setting. I’m not sure where this will lead to at this point.”

One thing Hannum says really worries her is the threat of further cuts to the state budget in the coming year and what that will do to funding for home care. She feels that cuts to the program that pays Home Care Aides like herself would be penny-wise but pound-foolish.

“I just keep playing that out in my mind, thinking, where does that send these people that are getting in-home caregiving? My mother-in-law, for instance.”

She says if the state cut the funding that pays for her to work at home and she had to go elsewhere to earn a living, her mother-in-law would have to be moved to an adult family home or a nursing home. As a Medicare-Medicaid recipient she qualifies for either.

“Both of those are higher cost to the state than the in-home caregiving. I’m the least expensive option of those three,” Hannum says.

“If these programs are cut, we’re going to be faced with no choice except to place her into a nursing home, which will increase the state’s cost for her care. So it’s mind boggling to me that they’re cutting what is essentially the least expensive option of the care of these clients.”