Forbes post, “Will Pete Buttigieg’s National Service Program Solve Our Eldercare Woes?”

Originally published at Forbes.com on October 17, 2019, and, yes, “Mayor Pete” didn’t win the primary, but national service continually reappears as a dream. . . 

 

No.

Next question.

OK, there’s actually more to the story than that.

Mandatory or quasi-mandatory national service proposals pop up every now and again, most recently in the form of a Brookings Institute report, and find their way into presidential campaign proposals, namely Pete Buttigieg’s proposal. They contain various inducements such as student loan forgiveness for college graduates, or money for further education for others, and offer hopes of restoring the frayed civic fabric by inculcating greater civic-mindedness in young people, as well as proposing practical benefits for young people in the form of job training, discipline, and the like – the “be all that you can be” pitch of the US Army of the 1980s and 1990s without any of the sacrifice or risk.

And let’s look at Buttigieg’s proposal, something he labels “A New Call To Service.” His plan begins with funding the Serve America Act; this 2009 legislation was intended to substantially increase the scale of national service programs such as AmeriCorps but its goals were never realized as the envisioned appropriations did not happen. Through this program, Buttigieg promises 250,000 paid service opportunities per year, with a focus on young adults who are in need of a structured job training, discipline-building program, that is, “opportunity youth” (a euphemism, it seems, for NEETs, young adults who are neither employed nor in educational or job-training programs). His Step 2 consists of federal grants for communities to “create ecosystems of service around regional issues.” And his Step 3 seeks to create a Chief Service Officer and “quadruple service opportunities to 1 million high school graduates” by 2026, with a vision that the final result will be

“a universal, national expectation of service for all 4 million high school graduates every year, such that the first question asked of every college freshman or new hire is: ‘where did you serve?’”

In other words, while not mandating national service, his objective is to create as quasi-mandatory a system as possible, in which it’s a bit shameful not to have done so, in much the same way (as I read it) as a young Mormon is not legally obliged but expected to serve a mission. Now, there are multiple reasons why I’m not a fan, but let’s focus on one component:

What will those young people be doing?

They will work on, he says,

“resilience and sustainability against climate disruption; addiction, mental health, and substance use; and long-term caregiving and intergenerational mentorship.”

And they will do so through new entities:

“a Climate Corps (Resilience AmeriCorps + 21st Century Conservation Service Corps), Community Health Corps (i.e. with a focus on community well-being, including mental health, addiction, and substance use issues), and Intergenerational Service Corps (i.e. with a focus on caregiving, mentorship, and other intergenerational service opportunities).”

There’s a lot to pick apart here. Using a group of national service workers on such projects as disaster relief, taking the place of national guard reservists who would otherwise be called up, or tasking them with work in national or state parks or nature preserves or working in blighted urban areas, has long been the standard prescription, and now such projects as weatherizing the homes of the elderly and the poor who can’t do it for themselves has been added to the list. But can a new high school graduate really do meaningful work in the field of mental health or addiction counseling? This looks as if Buttigieg hasn’t thought this through, or is (more charitably) mixing together multiple programs, including both Service Year proposals and proposals to encourage educated professionals to give more of their time.

And – yes, now I get to the bit which has to do with aging: the fact that Buttigieg places long-term caregiving on the list. The Brookings report likewise lists “helping older Americans remain in their homes” as a possible action national service programs might undertake. Does this mean workers providing general handyman services, or maybe more extensive renovation work to make homes more accessible to the wheelchair/walker-using elderly? Or is this, again, a vision of these Service Year workers providing companion care, homemaking services, or more extensive personal care for the elderly?

I’m not a fan.

After all, notice what isn’t on this list: despite concerns about the high cost of child daycare, no one proposes that national service workers be sent to daycare centers, to provide extra manpower at an affordable cost. Parents know that caring for children is no simple task, especially when it comes to caring for them in a large-group environment; as much as we know full well that wages are low, we want caregivers who are nurturing and we measure the quality of a prospective center by the number of years of experience of their staff.

The same is just as true of eldercare. Children of aging parents, no differently than parents of young children, want caregivers who know what they’re doing, have made a long-term commitment, and feel a calling to the work.

At the same time, there’s another sort of “Corps” that fits the bill: the Senior Corps. Unlike the one-year, full-time, young adult requirements for the AmeriCorps program, the Senior Corps provides a set of opportunities for over-55s to volunteer in their communities on a long-term basis. And among the programs offered is the Senior Companions program, in which volunteers receive training and support and then serve 15 – 40 hours per week providing assistance to the elderly, either in their homes or at Adult Day sites. The work is unpaid except for a small stipend of $2.65/hour. In fact, oddly, participation is limited to individuals with incomes below 200% of poverty guidelines; rather than permitting individuals with higher incomes to volunteer without a stipend, they must find a different volunteer program.

The projected future increase in eldercare needs, in terms of the care itself and its cost, if that care is provided through a paid workforce, is daunting. But tasking young adults via a quasi-mandatory year of national service is not the right solution.

 

December 2024 Author’s note: the terms of my affiliation with Forbes enable me to republish materials on other sites, so I am updating my personal website by duplicating a selected portion of my Forbes writing here.