Caregiver takes advantage of union/college partnership to learn a new trade, bolster finances for retirement
by Andy Furillo
Closing in on the big 6-0, Eunice Worrel-Santos is starting to think about retirement, and it looks like she’ll be able to spend her golden years with a little more green in her pocket.
Thanks to the California Community College Chancellor’s Office and its partnership with United Domestic Workers union, Worrel-Santos, 58, is enrolled in adult-education bookkeeping classes that figure to boost her income by thousands of dollars a year.
Worrel-Santos wants to travel, has relatives on the other side of the country from her home in Anaheim, and who couldn’t use a few extra bucks to enjoy the sights and sounds of elsewhere—even if you live close to Disneyland?
“Hopefully we’ll be able to save more and be able to invest more, so in the future we will have a better way to enjoy our retirement.”
Eunice Worrel-Santos, UDW Member and Bookkeeping Student
“Hopefully we’ll be able to save more and be able to invest more, so in the future we will have a better way to enjoy our retirement,” she says about herself and her husband. “In the short term, we should be able to pay off the mortgage, and then we’ll be able to take vacations from time to time.”
The program is part of the California Community Colleges’ (CCC) Vision 2030, a collaborative action plan aimed at increasing student success and closing equity gaps in education by improving access, affordability, and support. One of the goals is to boost the income of the state’s working poor by helping 70 percent of them obtain post-secondary degrees or certificates by 2030. Toward that goal, the Chancellor’s Office last year formed a partnership with the UDW, a union serving 171,000 home care workers.
Worrel-Santos has been caring for her 88-year-old mother and 90-year-old father since 2015, for which she is employed by the state’s In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS) program. Her husband is a professional locksmith, and they own their own home in Anaheim. But the mortgage, the food bills, health care, gasoline, utilities and taxes leaves them tight in the wallet almost every month.
Through the UDW, Worrel-Santos learned of its partnership with CCC and enrolled in the bookkeeping courses at the Anaheim campus of North Orange Continuing Education (NOCE).
“The basics of the accounting system, including payroll,” she responds when asked about whats she’s learning. “The basics of business management. Simple accounting systems. QuickBooks software. If you at a later time own a business or work in a business, you’d know what an accountant does, how they enter books, how they do financial statements.”
When Worrel-Santos completes the program, she hopes to be up and running as an independent tax preparer, working at home while she continues to provide care for her mom and dad.
Meanwhile, she’s enrolled her parents in NOCE art and brain-health classes to sharpen their minds and memories.
Her bookkeeping studies, the care she provides for her parents, their enrollment in classes that have improved their quality of life—it all has Worrel-Santos feeling pretty good about things.
“Certainly being able to go out and be with professionals, teachers and students in a professional environment rather than staying in the four corners of your house, it is a big difference,” she says. “I have been diagnosed with depression, and I used to take medication, but now I don’t have to depend on it. This gives you a brighter, more cheerful, a more positive perspective.”
To learn more about the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office, the CCC’s partnership with the UDW, and Vision 2030, visit www.cccco.edu/About-Us/Vision-2030. Information about UDW can be found at www.udw.org/our-union/.
