The Biden administration announced Tuesday that American Rescue Plan investments in home and community-based care have reached close to $37 billion, including more than $240 million in Maine.
The coordinator of the American Rescue Plan, Gene Sperling, said the decision to pay more than 24,000 direct care workers in Maine an average bonus of $3,400 is "an amount of money that matters but it also sends a signal that this is valued work," he said.
Sperling also highlighted Maine's decision to use state funds to boost wages for direct care workers to at least 125% of the minimum wage.
According to a report last spring from the Maine Center for Economic Policy, a progressive advocacy group, these investments stabilized the direct care workforce, though numbers have yet to rebound to pre-pandemic levels.
Sperling acknowledged that more direct care workers are still needed. He describes such investments as "down payments" and says that President Joe Biden wants to expand federal funding to better support home and community based care.
