Eldercare aide shortage prompts 1.7M Michiganders to care for relatives

For decades, ballroom dancer Tonia Deliz has loved teaching engaged couples practicing their wedding dance to 90-year-olds who want to salsa. 

The Arthur Murray-trained dancer managed several Metro Detroit dance studios, including Deliz Dance Sport, conveniently across the street from her condo in Wyandotte. For 10 years, she taught the foxtrot, tango and cha-cha at that location. Deliz didn’t mind leading late-night classes until her father, Nicholas, got sick. 

“He smoked like a chimney up until he was 70 years old,” she says, rattling off his health issues. “He had black lung, emphysema, COPD.” 

He also worked in a steel mill with blast furnaces, likely exposed to asbestos. “All that mesothelium, he was one of those that got all of that,” Deliz says.

Nicholas moved in with her in 2009 so she could nurse him back to health. She crisscrossed the street between the studio and condo for a year to cook meals and ensure her 127-pound father ate. Then dementia started seeping in. Juggling the business and her father became too challenging, so she closed the studio in 2010.  

Eleven years flew by as Deliz cared for her father while teaching classes on the side for schools and community centers.

“I didn’t plan on that,” says Deliz, now 63, reflecting on the decade. “That’s how that worked out. It’s crazy when I think about it.”

If not children, who?

Deliz is among 1.73 million Michigan adults who find themselves caregiving when a loved one gets sick. Some families can’t afford to hire caregivers. Others can’t find reliable aides. 

In a field already lacking workers to meet demand, a 2024 Michigan Healthcare Workforce Index report found Michigan will be short over 170,000 home healthcare aides in the next decade. 

The shortage will become especially problematic for baby boomers and their children, explains Michelle Wein, director of research for Michigan Health Council, which compiled the report. 

“As our population is aging, not only in Michigan but nationally, there’s going to be a stronger need for aides to care for people’s parents or for tragic illnesses,” she says.

According to the report, Michigan home health aides have an 86% turnover rate, which is higher than most healthcare occupations. 

Low wages are one factor. The average hourly wage for home health care aids in Michigan was $15.27 in 2023, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

“Somebody can go to McDonald’s and make $20 an hour, where a lot of these [caregivers] are making $14 or $15,” says Melissa Seifert, AARP Michigan associate state director for government affairs.

Michigan needs about 36,000 more direct care workers than the 165,000 it currently has, she says.

“The issue is there’s uncompetitive pay, low job satisfaction, unpredictable schedules and then there’s really not a lot of benefits offered to individuals who work in these environments,” Seifert says. “Couple that with a job that is very challenging, that a lot of people don’t think, ‘You know what I want to do when I grow up? I want to be a home aide worker.’”

Those who do stay in the field see caregiving as “a labor of love,” she says. “We always call these people the unsung heroes.” 

Caregiving ‘helped me get through that grief’

By 2019, Deliz’s divorced parents had both taken a medical turn. Deliz’s mom, Ruth, was diagnosed with cancer in her spine around New Year’s 2020. 

Both her parents couldn’t be left alone. 

Sitting in her mom’s home — which she jokingly calls a “granny house,” with floral wallpaper, floral curtains and knickknacks — she recalls the stress. January to March was a blur of running “back and forth, back and forth” to care for her dad at her Wyandotte condo and her mom here in Trenton. 

Nicholas died on March 3, 2020, five days before Ruth. Then COVID hit, and all dancing came to a halt.

“That year was a nightmare,” Deliz says. 

By 2022, ballroom dancing returned, but classes were nowhere near the sizes Deliz saw pre-pandemic.

Then, a friend who was a part-time caregiver, suggested caregiving. “She’s like, “You should do it. You were so good with your dad for so long, and it’d be something.” 

Deliz had no plans to become a caregiver, but when she saw a Care.com listing to help Oma — a sweet 96-year-old German woman who had difficulty walking — she took the opportunity. 

“I was brokenhearted,” Deliz says of her parents’ passing. “And I think that caring for her really helped me get through that grief I was in.”

Oma, whose full name was Antonia Schaefer, died in April. Deliz now cares for Cindy Taylor, a 70-year-old with a severe form of multiple sclerosis. Deliz learned Taylor’s former caregiver stole $100,000 from her by accessing her debit and credit cards. When Taylor discovered her accounts had insufficient funds, the caregiver took off. Taylor says she’s been waiting a year for the Wayne County Prosecutor’s office to act.

“I just felt so bad about what happened to her,” Deliz says.

Deliz is one of three caregivers who help Taylor seven days a week at her home in Taylor, Michigan. As Deliz puts away a grocery delivery, Taylor explains her needs are “more domestic” — cooking, cleaning, laundry and feeding her cat. 

“I can ambulate in my house with a walker,” she says. “When we go out I need a wheelchair because I can’t stand more than three minutes without being at risk for falling because my legs are very weak.” 

She gave up her driver’s license shortly after her diagnosis in 2012. “I almost died one day because I was approaching a train, and I couldn’t get my foot off of the accelerator. I came within inches,” she says.

She started hiring caregivers in 2015 and can’t even count how many she’s had. Since the theft incident a year ago, Deliz is caregiver No. 8.

Taylor’s husband died 21 years ago from illness. Her two sons are busy raising families and running local restaurants. While elderly parents have historically moved in with children, many boomers like Taylor have shifted their mindset.

“I don’t want my boys to have to have me live with them because that’s never good or healthy for a marriage. It just isn’t,” she says.

Wein says this is “such a departure from how care has been provided for our elderly members of society for the last 100 years.” 

“Most people had their parents move in with them when they became old and cared for them themselves. So if we’re moving toward this idea of home health care provided by other individuals, not familial members, that’s a big change of how elderly care has been traditionally provided.”

The shortage and the strain

As caregiver shortages persist, nonprofits like Michigan Health Council are exploring solutions to keep workers in the field. One idea is to create career pathways where, with time and employer-paid education, workers can move up in a company, Wein says.

Caregiving positions typically don’t require certifications or a college education. As Wein puts it, “No matter how much work you do as a home healthcare aide, you’re not going to become a nurse. You need a degree.”

Meanwhile, caregiver advocates are trying to address costs that fall on family caregivers. A 2021 AARP study found three-quarters of family caregivers spend over $7,000 on out-of-pocket caregiving expenses. 

To offer relief, AARP Michigan has been lobbying the Legislature to create a $5,000 tax credit for individuals who can show expenses incurred while caregiving for a loved one, Seifert says. 

AARP is also developing resource centers in partnership with the Area Agencies on Aging. Through online tools, caregivers can find best practices for changing a PICC line dressing to keep catheter sites clean to helping a parent walk to the bathroom safely.

“A family caregiver is typically somebody who’s 40, works full time, is typically a woman and is also giving 40 hours in care to a loved one,” Seifert says. “We know their time is precious, so online [platforms] seem to be the best avenue for a lot of these individuals.”

Seifert knows from personal experience. Seven years ago, her mother was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer and passed within seven months. 

“I got thrown into a situation where I was traveling three to four times a week from Lansing to Port Huron,” she says. “I had two small children, I’m married, and having to deal with work, finding care for my children, being supportive of my husband still and also doing my job, it was very challenging. A lot of people experience that stress of caregiving, especially when you’re thrown into it unexpectedly.”

The next dance

Deliz enjoys caring for Taylor while teaching ballroom on the side. She gushes about the couples she’s taught for 20 years and excitedly opens Facebook to show off 90-year-old couples decked in brightly matching luau outfits, twirling at a senior center dance.

For her, caregiving and dancing are one and the same — an opportunity to uplift people and “share kindness, compassion and love.”

“Tonia is wonderful,” Taylor attests. “I feel so blessed I finally have a couple of [caregivers] that are good people I trust.”

After all Deliz has experienced with her parents and others, she can only hope she’ll stay healthy enough to dance into her golden years — without a caregiver looking after her. 

“I don’t have kids. I’m not married,” she says. “I hope I’m never going to get to that point.”