Georgia ranks last in caregiving, but student-led nonprofit aims to help

ATLANTA — Georgia is facing a growing caregiving crisis, ranking last in the nation for available caregivers.

The Mesothelioma Center reports there are only seven caregivers for every 1,000 Georgians — the lowest ratio in the country — and recent immigration crackdowns are possibly making the situation even worse.

A nonprofit, CareYaya, is working to help fill the gap by connecting college students to families in need of care.

Latisha August, a rising senior and pre-nursing student, is one of more than a thousand students in Georgia signed up as a student caregiver for CareYaya.

[DOWNLOAD: Free WSB-TV News app for alerts as news breaks]

“I’ve gained a lot of empathy,” August said. “It really helped getting hands-on experience as I’m meeting with families as some sort of clinical work which I really like doing.”

CareYaya connects students like August to families who need assistance with tasks such as light housekeeping, medication reminders and memory support.

“It’s not like I’m just a nurse aide. It’s like I’m their friend,” August said.

The platform’s CEO, Neal Shah, says CareYaya is grant-funded, making it free for families and students to sign up. Families pay caregivers directly, making it more affordable for them and more profitable for students.

“There’s 4 million college students across America that want to go into healthcare, clinical careers, and they currently are not in the caregiving economy, so our program connects them to care for older adults in their community,” Shah said.

Shah says the demand for caregivers is only increasing as the nation’s population ages.

“We have two different competing forces going on — there’s a reduction in workforce at a time when our country’s population is growing older and people are needing more long-term care,” Shah said. “So the demand is increasing and the supply is decreasing.”

TRENDING STORIES:

The U.S. Census Bureau estimates more than 80 million people will be over the age of 65 in the next five years. At the same time, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that more than 40% of home health aides are immigrants.

“I think one of the kind of the hidden or unintended consequences of changes in immigration policy is that, you know, if you think about it, a lot of America’s caregiving workforce is immigrants. Of that, a decent proportion is undocumented immigrants,” Shah said. “You know, these are jobs that are very tough and demanding, and not a lot of people are like rushing to sign up for.”

Shah says his platform is building up the domestic caregiving workforce with students like August.

“We have such a shortage of caregivers for elderly people,” August said.

CareYaya currently partners with six metro Atlanta universities — Emory, Georgia State, Georgia Tech, Morehouse, Spelman and Agnes Scott — but serves families in a wide area including:

Downtown/Midtown (including Midtown, Downtown, Old Fourth Ward, Inman Park), Buckhead/North Atlanta (including Buckhead, Brookhaven, Sandy Springs, Dunwoody), East Atlanta (including Decatur, Druid Hills, Virginia Highland, Candler Park), West Atlanta (including West End, Vine City, Atlantic Station), South Atlanta (including Grant Park, East Atlanta Village, Ormewood Park), and Surrounding Areas (including Marietta, Smyrna, Vinings, College Park, East Point, Decatur)

Nationally, more than 40,000 students are signed up.

Even if families live in Georgia but have loved ones in other states, they can sign them up for caregiving help.

For more information or to sign up, visit www.careyaya.org.

[SIGN UP: WSB-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter]