Karen Neag was enjoying one of her favorite family pastimes Thursday night — walking around Burr Pond State Park in Torrington with her husband, daughter and two dogs.
The jaunt, while an occasion to celebrate her husband’s birthday, had another purpose.
An hour earlier, Neag had picked up her 24-year-old daughter, Stephanie, from the group home where she lives on the other side of town and where workers were expected to walk off the job Friday morning.
Steffie, as Neag calls her daughter, has a genetic disorder called Phelan-McDermid syndrome. She’s nonverbal, has a high-pain tolerance, and with that comes a lack of safety awareness, and she often stays up for nights on end.
That was the reason for Thursday’s walk around the pond - to tire Steffie out in hopes she would lster fall asleep.
“I’m most concerned about her not sleeping the night,” Neag said.
The strike by 2,100 group home workers represented by SEIU District 1199 was called off just before midnight, barely more than six hours before Friday’s planned 6 a.m. picketing. But all day Thursday, family members and the operators of the 200 affected homes scrambled to relocate residents, some to nursing homes and others to temporarily live with family members.
Given her level of need, Steffie is unable to be placed in a nursing home like other residents, her mother said. “It would be so disruptive to the nursing home environment as well as herself.”
“She requires needs from head to toe,” she said. “I love her dearly but she is a complicated kid.”
Neag, a dental technician, said she’d be taking unpaid time off work to care for her daughter in the interim.
“Im lucky this is happening at a time when I’m at an age where I can take care of my daughter for the short term,” said the 59-year-old Neag. “If I was in my 80s, I don’t know if I could do this.”
She worries for group home residents who won’t go home with their families, but instead will be cared for by unfamiliar faces at nursing homes. She knows this isn’t what the union workers want, but she also understands their plight.
“The workers are long overdue to be respected and to be paid a livable wage so I totally support the strike,” Neag said.
Not a day goes by, she said, where she isn’t thankful for the staff at Oak Hill, which operates 70 group homes affected by threatened strike, including the one where her daughter lives.
Neag said she’s lobbied legislators for more funding for the nonprofits like Oak Hill that operate the homes. “Year after year, we’re denied,” she said. “I don’t understand it.”
“This whole situation is jaw dropping that our politicians would turn their backs on these individuals,” she said.
But Neag said she also remains hopeful that the union and Lamont administration will come to a deal.
“I just want to have a good sense that the state thinks highly of people like my daughter, enough not to put her in harm’s way,” she said.
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Strike threat brings daughter from group home to family home - CTPost
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