In the last five years alone, workers providing services to some of the state’s most vulnerable have reported at least 600 on-the-job injuries, according to state data obtained by the Statesman. But often when they do, they face a system plagued by disastrous underfunding, dire staffing shortages and a profound lack of oversight, which is placing both consumers and workers at risk of injury and death. Hundreds of thousands of Texans wait years on some of the nation’s longest waitlists to receive Medicaid-funded services that provide an alternative to institutional care. She was diagnosed with a concussion and brain bleed and still suffers debilitating symptoms, her attorney said.įor a decade, workers caring for Texas’ more than 100,000 disabled residents in the state’s system of home and community care have been alleging devastating injuries and attacks like those suffered by these three caregivers, the American-Statesman found after reviewing hundreds of pages of lawsuits and police reports.Ī yearlong Austin American-Statesman investigation into a system aimed at providing community-based services for hundreds of thousands of disabled Texans found it on the brink of collapse. When she came to, she pleaded with her employer for help, but the employer refused to call an ambulance or escort her to the hospital. Last December, 75-year-old Gloria Franco was alone caring for five clients in Del Rio when a man whose diaper she was changing began kneeing and punching her in the head.

After he had punched her repeatedly in the face, she escaped and sought help from a neighbor. In 2014, another caregiver was alone in a Houston suburb when a 19-year-old disabled client grabbed her by the throat and used a steak knife to rip her pants and underwear as he pressed himself against her neck, her lawyer said.

She said her employer showed little concern. She clawed at his face to break free, screamed and called for help. In the summer of 2013, a caregiver on her third shift of the day was sitting on the couch in the home of two men with disabilities in Kyle when one of them suddenly forced her arms above her head and removed her pants.

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