We Need the Essential Caregivers Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. TENNEY. Mr. Speaker, I rise today as the colead of H.R. 3733, the Essential Caregivers Act, to tell the stories of Americans across the country who are desperately calling on Congress to immediately act on this bill.

I also thank Representative Larson, who is my colead, for helping me sponsor this bill. I am grateful to him for his leadership and his compassion.

I have shared many heartbreaking and tragic stories before in this Chamber, and I will continue to do so until there is action on my bipartisan Essential Caregivers Act. Just as so many families who were forced to helplessly watch as their loved ones rapidly declined physically and mentally in long-term care facilities, I am not going to give up this fight. I am just getting started.

First and foremost, the Essential Caregivers Act is a critically important bill that would ensure the policies that were put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic never happen again. In my home State of New York, and many States across the Nation, families were literally shut out from their loved ones living in long-term care facilities, neglecting the basic needs of their loved ones at these facilities. These decisions to isolate long-term care facility residents were fatal and will have long-lasting impacts.

Today, I am here to share stories that go beyond my home State of New York. I will begin by sharing a story from Alaska. This is an excerpt from the book entitled ``Protecting Them to Death.'' This is a book that was compiled and written by my great constituent, Karla Abraham- Conley, who lost her mother in a long-term care facility.

This is an excerpt from the book compiled using COVID-19 isolation stories. The first one is a story from Denise Brown:

``Ohana'' means ``family'' in Hawaiian and that no one is left behind. This word means a lot to us. My mother's skilled nursing facility was an hour away from her home and ours, so they became her pseudo ohana.

She was moved there by the State of Alaska when an employee brought COVID-19 into her extended care facility. She was able to see us through a window once or twice a week because she was on the ground floor at that time. We talked every day on the phone, except for those days when she was too weak to answer my call. Last year on her birthday, when she was in the final skilled nursing facility that the State had moved her to, we cooked her dinner outside her window, we sent it in to her via a CNA. My boys built her rock towers, and we sang ``Happy Birthday'' through the window. But the moment they moved my mother to the second floor, I think she gave up hope of getting stronger, of seeing the faces she loved through the window. It was her one connection to us that still seemed real and wasn't through a virtual visit. We lost her on January 12, 2021.

Mr. Speaker, Ms. Brown could still be here with us today if she had had access to an essential caregiver.

The next two stories come to us from Arizona. The first story is from Linda Thompson, also featured in the book ``Protecting Them to Death'':

My husband is in a memory care facility. He no longer speaks as a direct result of the isolation during the pandemic. He uses a walker. Because he was confined to his room, he was unable to exercise his legs. All his physical abilities have declined significantly. Change of any kind takes a toll on dementia residents. Knowing that he spent 17 days in a sterile room in the COVID-19 ward of his facility is heartbreaking. He had very few symptoms but lost 20 pounds. I am still praying this never happens again.

If he had access to his loved ones, Mrs. Thompson's husband might still be speaking today. But the moment he was shut off from his essential caregivers, his health took a devastating toll.

Also from Arizona, here is the story from Anne Martinez, who lost her mother in the pandemic, also from the book ``Protecting Them to Death'':

Every time I visited my mother, she looked like a zoo animal behind the patio door. She would mouth that she was hungry or motion for what I had brought to drink. The blueberries I left got moldy, the almond milk grew stale, and the canned organic soups gathered dust. Nobody was giving them to her. My dad gestured at the closed patio window how much he missed her, and she avoided eye contact so as not to cry. Some days I was allowed to bring home-cooked meals and other days I was not allowed to feed her.

On the day she was transferred to a hospice care facility, I was with her to say goodbye and could see the particles in her dentures that had not been cleaned in weeks and blackened food underneath her fingernails from trying to eat with her bare hands.

I was actually relieved when they told me she had contracted COVID shortly after being vaccinated. Nobody deserves to spend their last years, months, weeks, or even days, alone in a facility without their loved ones at their side.

Anne's story is just one of thousands that are occurring across this Nation.

I will continue sharing these stories and urging immediate passage of the bipartisan Essential Caregivers Act. Denise, Linda, Anne, and their families, friends, and loved ones are depending on it.

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