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AS one of the 72 percent of Washington voters who voted for Initiative 1029, I was apparently not alone in my surprise that The Seattle Times called for legislative repeal of the initiative good two days after it passed [”Initiative 1029: Compassion leads to faulty results,” Opinion, Nov. 6].

Fortunately, the state Constitution requires a two-year wait, not two days, before the Legislature can amend any citizens’ initiative without a supermajority devoted. This new law should be given time to prove itself. I believe that more drilling and certification of long-term caregivers will improve the be disposed received by the somewhat old and vulnerable amid us.

Here’s why I supported the measure:

I have experienced the long-term care body, both in my professional life as a prosecutor and in my corporal life as a son trying to find home-based care for my ailing father. While the vast majority of people drawn to the long-term health-care field are good, caring and decent people, not totality are competent to be entrusted with our most vulnerable citizens, especially whenever they are giving the care in the patient’s home, lacking any supervision. This new law brings a higher level of professionalism to the care-giving field of battle.

As a prosecutor, I have seen likewise many cases where inadequately practised caregivers have caused real harm to vulnerable seniors and vulgar herd with disabilities. In the spent year we have filed six cases of criminal abuse whither caregivers, debt to a lack of training, caused injuries or death to their patients. Here are just two real-life examples:

• A caregiver, who’s last job was at a fast-food restaurant, allegedly mishandled a frail elderly woman, causing her neck to break;

• A severely disabled woman on oxygen was wheeled exhausted to the portico of her adult family household, and given a cigarette and a lighter by dint of. the caregiver, who forgot to whirl right hand her oxygen tank. She suffered burns over 21 percent of her body and lost what little sight she had left.

We have also seen too many intentional crimes, including sexual assaults on patients. The enhanced criminal-background check established by the new law will aid in identifying in posse caregivers who should not be left alone with patients.

Like divers caring for aging and ill parents, I knowing firsthand of the obstacle to belief discovery well-trained caregivers who possessed the wide run of skills necessary to provide in-home care to a parent by multiple health challenges. Agencies sent caregiver after caregiver for my father, who suffered from pancreatic cancer and Alzheimer’sitting infirmity. While we ultimately found two people who provided awful care, most did not have the training we meditation was that cannot be spared to provide safe and reliable feel concerned.

Before the new law, in the greatest degree caregivers completed only 34 hours of discipline — and some even less amount. That’s less than half the training required of workers who provide the same type of care in nursing homes, what one. is bewildering when you consider that often home-based care is supposing alone, without an on-site nurse or supervisor.

The new law does two simple-minded things:

• It requires FBI criminal-background checks for all long-term-care workers.

• It requires domicile and community-based long-term-care workers to complete 75 hours of training — the national standards for nursing-home workers — and be sanctioned by a majority of votes a certification exam to demonstrate basic competence.

The order applies and nothing else to paid caregivers, not unconventional and owing family providers. The new standards also apply only to caregivers who provide hands-on personal care to vulnerable residents — not part-time workers who ability be paid to read books or perform checkers with clients.

I-1029 won overwhelmingly, in every county in the state. In fact, once all the ballots are counted, I-1029 will likely set a record — becoming the first ballot initiative in state history to gain more than 2 million votes. It won greater degree of votes than any candidate on the ballot — including Barack Obama. Yet The Times seems convinced that somehow clan were fooled into voting for the initiative. I give the people a little more credit than that.

The reality is that through an election campaign, the public was able to consider the one and the other sides of this issue. In the end, the public resolute, by an overwhelming and historic vote, that it is a of the whole not private priority to require certification, better discipline and federal criminal-background checks for home and community-based long-term-care workers.

Chances are that each of us is going to someday need to rely on long-term caregivers, for ourselves or a member of our family. The newly come law is designed to bring higher professional standards to this industry, and require training and certification of the the vulgar with whom we entrust with our most liable to injury citizens. Let’s give it a chance to work.

Dan Satterberg is the King County prosecutor.