Gemma & Brianna

Gemma Calinda, who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis as a teenager, is seated in her wheelchair. She is holding the arms of Brianna Jostlin, a white woman who is Gemma's personal care attendant, who is standing to the right of Gemma and leaning d
Brianna, who has been a personal care attendant for over a year, is standing with her legs crossed, her right hand in her pocket and left hand tucking her hair behind her ear. She is wearing navy scrubs and white athletic shoes.
Gemma Calinda, who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis as a teenager, is seen from her left side, her feet facing towards the left of the frame and the wheel of her wheelchair in the foreground. She is leaning back with her head facing up, and she
Gemma Calinda, who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis as a teenager, is seated in her wheelchair, facing the camera, and smiling with her arms out. She is wearing a black top, orange pants with a butterfly pattern, grey shoes, and pink fingerless

Care Team Bios

Gemma Calinda

Gemma Calinda was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis as a teenager, and has used a wheelchair for the last seven years. She attended Howard University and Kaplan University where she obtained a Master’s of Science Management specializing in healthcare. Deeply appreciative of the support she received from her home attendants over the years, Gemma has dedicated herself to improving the salaries of home care workers in New York State through Hand in Hand's New York Caring Majority campaign, where she currently serves as the Hudson Valley organizer.

Brianna Jostlin

Brianna has been a personal care attendant for over a year. Her passion for home care stems from her grandmother who serves as the Director of Nursing at the Philmont Hearth, a community based residential treatment facility in Philmont, NY. Brianna is in the process of completing her Phlebotomy certification and is a nursing student at Hudson Valley Community College. Upon graduation, she plans to remain a home care worker to continue her passion of helping and serving those in need.

 

Interview Transcript

Brianna: My name is Brianna Josslyn, I'm a PCA or a patient care assistant and home care, and I've been taking care of Gemma for three months. We're really close now. And I think she's very caring. She's very hardworking. She loves to work. She'll work constantly if you let her. She's hilarious. So I think we're really close. I look up to her a lot.

Gemma: My name is Gemma Calenda. I work at hand in hand or the New York majority. And Brianna Josslyn is my caretaker. Brianna is an extremely caring individual. She always makes sure that all of my needs are met no matter what. And she knows how to be a caretaker. She's excellent.

Brianna: While being a care worker, I've learned a lot about the healthcare industry in general, and I've learned a lot of things that I didn't know about it before, like the things like the wages and stuff like that, but more so how big of a role you can play in somebody's life like that, you didn't know before because like Gemma, if I wasn't here, if I was in her life, her life would be a lot different. So I think you learn how important your job is to some people.

Gemma: Caregiving means to me that, that all my basic needs are being taken care of, things that other individuals may take for granted. Basic caregiving has changed my life because it is an amazing thing that I have that I'm able to obtain, but it's very, very different. I've been independent my entire life and I've been in a wheelchair for eight years. However, I've only needed this service for about give or take two years. So it's, you know, I had to kind of let go and stop thinking that I could do everything.

Brianna: Health care system needs to change their wages, because I don't think that personally I make enough money or any of us make enough money to do what we do. I think that our job requires a lot of time and a lot of effort and a lot of intimacy with another person that other people would never understand.

Gemma: The pay is horrendous and the work that they do is invaluable. So I know the pay is a big problem for individuals who want to be caretakers and they just can't afford it. You don't get health insurance. You don't there are no benefits, there's no sick, no vacation. It's literally the hours that you work are the you know, that's the money that you get. If you don't work, you don't get paid. So that's a big problem. If the infrastructure bill is passed, the first thing that needs to happen is to make sure that it's going to go for home care worker wages. We're not looking at a bonus. We're now looking at benefits, not looking at anything. But they need to have an increase in wages. So if that does in fact happen, it will make a huge difference in my life because there are several days that I go without care. Last week, nine hours of care, two shifts weren't weren't there. I couldn't get out the bed for work on time. I finally found someone to help me get up. The other time. The other shift was couldn't get in the bed, couldn't go to sleep until someone was able to come by just to help me. And that meant that there was not going to be food necessarily or something. I may be leftovers that I had, but could I reach it? Could I get it? So you know, the availability of home care workers, if that is a result of this bill, that would be amazing. But that's how it would definitely change my life. I wouldn't be wondering or calling the agency every day saying, do you have someone for me?

Brianna: I can't imagine being in a position where everything that I do for myself every day, like any personal care or anything that just comes naturally to me, I couldn't imagine being in a position where I couldn't do that for myself anymore. So I think it has taught me to not take for granted things like that and not to feel like I'm always going to have that.

Gemma: We really need to have home care workers get paid more. We need to make sure that this happens. We need to pass, you know, as I'm going to say, fair pay for home care. It's something that is essential. I'm demanding the pay that they're worth and they're worth every penny, you know? I mean, I would not be able to do half the things that I do without Brianna not even close. She gets my day started. These are just the basic needs that everybody can do for themselves most of the time. But there are some members out there who can't and we should be able to live that type of life as well.

Brianna: We grew really close and because of our age difference, I mean, just like she depends on me for a lot of things, I learned to depend on her for a lot of things as well.

Gemma: The most joyful aspect of my relationship with Brianna is that we laugh all the time and we get along great. And I can depend upon her and she knows I'm here, but literally from the minute. She walks in the door, we're laughing, you know, she makes things fun, even though, you know, she's not coming here doing necessarily fun things. But, you know, we're in the bathroom, in the shower, and we're cracking up to the point where I'm like, I got to get out. We got to go to work. And we're just laughing so hard, you know, and it's just funny. So that's I think that's the best part that I know my day is going to be better when she walks in the door.