For more than 12 years, caregiving has been a part of Vincenta Santos’s life. It is not simply a job, but something she now describes as a calling. Her journey into caregiving began long before she enrolled in a training class with the Center for Caregiver Advancement (CCA). It started with her family.
A Lifetime of Providing Quality Care to Others
Vincenta first learned the meaning of caregiving while caring for her younger brother, who was born with brain cancer. Doctors did not expect him to live very long, but with assistance from family caregivers he defied the odds and lived for 27 years. When he was 16, he stopped walking and needed full-time care. Vincenta stepped in and learned how to provide complex, hands-on support, including managing a catheter and feeding him through a G-tube.
Later, she cared for her mother, who had congestive heart failure, and her father, who experienced health problems related to Agent Orange exposure. Along the way, she made a major personal decision: she gave up her career as a hairdresser to become a full-time In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS) caregiver, which was more rewarding.
Life Changes Led to Career Changes
After losing her brother and mother, she found herself missing caregiving deeply.
“I felt empty and unfulfilled when I wasn’t working as a caregiver,” she recalls.
That realization helped her understand that caregiving was more than something she did for her family. It was where she belonged. Vincenta took on a full-time caregiving role for a community member who is a war veteran. She has been his IHSS provider for several years now, and finds this role very fulfilling.
Returning to the Classroom to Update Her Caregiving Skills
When Vincenta recently contacted her union, SEIU 2015, to ask about a Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) program offered by CCA, her journey took an unexpected turn. She was told about the “IHSS to CNA Pathway” program, which requires that she enroll in a home caregiver training course at CCA as a first step. Vincenta agreed to take this first step. She enrolled in CCA’s IHSS Caregiving Essentials course. This is an online training course for IHSS caregivers that provides foundational caregiving skills.
During the enrollment process, the CCA Outreach Coordinators also recognized that Vincenta could benefit from additional digital skills. That led her to enroll in CCA’s Digital Literacy Training for IHSS Workers course with instructor Qing Bai. The plan was for Vincenta to take the Digital Literacy course first, and then follow that with the IHSS Caregiving Essentials course.
Vincenta was excited to take these training courses, but also nervous.
“It has been many years since I took a class, but you never stop learning.”
CCA Outreach Coordinators encouraged her throughout the enrollment process and helped make sure she knew when her classes were starting.
From Minimal Digital Knowledge to Helping Others with Computer Skills
Before taking the Digital Literacy class, Vincenta wasn’t very comfortable using a computer. One of her first lessons with CCA was learning how to respond to emails. Soon, she was learning how to compose messages, identify spam, navigate Google, and save documents and information into files.
The new digital skills quickly became useful in her caregiving work. When her consumer had trouble replying to an email from his doctor, she was able to step in and help.
“Before that digital literacy class, I would look at my smartphone and ask myself, ‘Okay, what are we doing here?’” she says. “My niece would usually tell me, ‘Let me show you how to do this!’”
Now, Vincenta can be the one helping someone else.
Her digital literacy training also made CCA’s IHSS Caregiving Essentials course easier to navigate, giving her the confidence to access the dashboard and use the Blackboard online learning platform.
A Seasoned Caregiver Learns New Ways to Provide Quality Care
Although Vincenta already had a lot of experience as a caregiver, the IHSS Caregiving Essentials course offered her some new perspectives that have helped improve the quality of her caregiving work.
One of Vincenta’s biggest takeaways from the IHSS Essentials course with CCA Instructor Connie Gutierrez was simple but powerful: patience.
Caregiving can have difficult days. Her consumer may sometimes become frustrated or snap at her, and the training taught her not to take those moments personally.
Instead, she learned to step back and give the person time to calm down. As Vincenta explains it…
“CCA really does teach a person-centered caregiving approach, and it works!”
She now puts that lesson into practice every day.
Looking Ahead: From IHSS Caregiver to Certified Nursing Assistant
Vincenta’s caregiving career is far from over. She is working on getting into CCA’s IHSS to CNA Pathway program and hopes to become a Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA), with the long-term goal of working in a hospital. And she is hoping that her new digital skills and essential caregiving skills will serve her in her next endeavor – training to be a Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA).
For Vincenta, the path from hairdresser to caregiver to future CNA is one that has unfolded through experience, loss, learning, and purpose.
And her advice to anyone considering working as a caregiver is heartfelt:
“Take that first step! Start the caregiving journey and you will love it.”
She believes caregiving offers something deeply meaningful and rewarding: the opportunity to help another person, help them maintain their health and independence, bring them joy, and simply be someone who listens.
Sometimes, a true calling takes years to recognize. For Vincenta, caregiving was there all along, just waiting for her to take the next step to further develop and update her skills.
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