Daughter of slain caregiver Kolada testifies before Oregon House committee
Published 5:12 pm Tuesday, March 4, 2025
Portland resident Jessica McFeron, daughter of late Medford caregiver Barbara "Bobbie" Kolada, testified on her mother's injuries and related death, in 2023, she said was due to her mother working alone in a group home setting. (Screenshot of House Committee on Early Childhood and Human Services)
State Rep. Pam Marsh (D-Ashland) presented House Bill 3168 to the House Committee on Early Childhood and Human Services on Tuesday. Marsh introduced the bill to ensure adequate staffing is provided in group home settings. (Screenshot of House Committee on Early Childhood and Human Services)
Bobbie Kolada was on life support with a broken neck and a brain bleed following an apparent attack Feb. 20, 2023, by a developmentally disabled man for whom she cared at a group home in Medford. Kolada died March 27, 2023. (Photo courtesy of Jessica Bandy)
Barbara "Bobbie" Kolada reportedly told family and colleagues prior to her March 27, 2023 death that she worried for caregivers working alone with residents who were known for becoming physically violent. Kolada had amassed at least a dozen Workers Compensation claims prior to being fatally injured in February 2023. (Rogue Valley Times file photo)
Barbara "Bobbie" Kolada pictured in more recent years with her daughter, Portland resident Jessica Bandy McFeron. (Rogue Valley Times file photo)
Supporters of bill co-sponsored by Rep. Pam Marsh say improved staffing ratios and state oversight would protect caregivers and residents
The daughter of late Medford caregiver Barbara “Bobbie” Kolada offered dramatic and tearful testimony by video link Tuesday morning before the Oregon House Committee on Early Childhood and Human Services.
Jessica McFeron spoke in support of the proposed House Bill 3168. The bill would require increased staffing ratios in circumstances where the safety of caregivers providing for high-needs developmentally disabled residents could be put in jeopardy and would mandate that agencies that staff residential homes — and which receive increased funding for enhanced staffing — use the money for its intended purpose.
State Rep. Pam Marsh, D-Ashland, presented House Bill 3168 to the House Committee on Early Childhood and Human Services on Tuesday. Marsh introduced the bill to ensure adequate staffing is provided in group home settings. (Screenshot of House Committee on Early Childhood and Human Services)
State Rep. Pam Marsh, D-Ashland, who sponsored the bill along with state Sen. Lisa Reynolds of Portland, called the proposed legislation a “very modest first step to begin to address the worker safety issues in our IDD (intellectual and developmental disabilities) residential system.”
“The bill does two things,” Marsh told the committee at the meeting, which was livestreamed from the Oregon Capitol in Salem. “First, it requires residential homes serving high-need residents to provide a staff safety plan to (the Department of Human Services). The plan must address emergency protocols, staff supervisor ratios and other safety issues as determined by the department.
“We need to know that the people in charge of services have systematically and thoughtfully considered and implemented measures for the safety and protection of staff,” Marsh said. “Second, the bill gives DHS the ability to require IDD agencies that receive an exceptional service rate to actually use that funding for the intended purpose, which is to augment the staff-to-resident ratios.”
Marsh said Kolada’s death — the subject of an award-winning, five-part investigative series by the Rogue Valley Times in 2023 — motivated her to present the bill during the current legislative session.
Kolada, a 5-foot-4 grandmother who worked for Grants Pass-based Partnerships in Community Living, was alone during a night shift at a group home in Medford on Feb. 20, 2023, when she was injured by a resident, according to an investigation.
Marsh told committee members she read the Times’ series “with tremendous alarm.”
Kolada had been injured dozens of times before that night, according to Times’ reporting, and spent five weeks in the ICU of a Medford hospital before succumbing to her injuries.
Barbara “Bobbie” Kolada reportedly told family and colleagues prior to her March 27, 2023, death that she worried for caregivers working alone with residents who were known for becoming physically violent. Kolada had amassed at least a dozen Workers Compensation claims prior to being fatally injured in February 2023. (Rogue Valley Times file photo)
PCL officials reported the injury as a medical episode, and a police report was not filed until Kolada’s family requested further investigation by Medford police. The Jackson County District Attorney’s office later confirmed that a male resident “likely” caused Kolada’s injuries but declined to pursue charges.
Last summer, Kolada’s family filed a wrongful death suit seeking $10 million in damages and naming as defendants Partnerships in Community Living, PCL co-founder Joanne Fuhrman and the state of Oregon to include the Department of Human Services and the Office of Developmental Disabilities Services.
McFeron, who testified during the House Committee meeting via Zoom, urged the passing of the proposed bill as well as additional safeguards for caregivers. Increased staffing for the home in which her mother worked, she told the committee, “could have saved my mother’s life.”
“She was alone. There was no way to call for help. One of the ones she was caring for was asleep,” McFeron said. “The other was non-verbal, so he (couldn’t) call for help for her. There was no one else there, so she just waited.
“She bled, and she waited. There was no plan for how to get help if you were a sole provider and something like this happened,” McFeron said through tears.
“So, she spent hours bleeding, hours pleading with the man that she was caring for to not try to pick her up because he didn’t fully understand what was going on, to not lick her blood because he didn’t understand what was going on,” the daughter said. “And she had to wait and wait until someone else … found her and could get her some help.”
By some accounts, Kolada spent several hours alone in the home before a shift change arrived and someone could call 911 for help.
“Those hours haunt me,” McFeron said Tuesday, noting. “I wonder, what if someone else was there with her and could get her help? What if there was a way for her to signal help faster … would she be here?”
Reynolds voiced “strong support” for the bill. Reynolds, a pediatrician, said the proposed legislation was “a modest but meaningful step in the right direction when it comes to protecting both caregivers and the people they look after.”
“Caregivers who love the work they do deserve better than the subpar staffing ratios and inadequate emergency plans,” Reynolds said.
Shaun Notdurft, a caregiver in Oregon group homes for the past 32 years, urged better staffing and improved resources for caregivers, whom he said are still working for 2016 wages.
Notdurft said improved staffing would make for better caregiver safety but also better quality of life for residents who require increased staffing to participate in activities such as making trips outside the home.
“And if I’m (working) alone, I end up being a referee more than anyone else,” he noted.
Notdurft told the committee that “Oregon is vastly behind in where we should be,” urging the committee to “support not only this bill but change in this industry.”
Rachel Hansen, a political strategist at SEIU Local 503, testified in support of the bill, which she called “a critical step forward towards improving safety for individuals with intellectual disabilities and the dedicated support for professionals who care for them.”
“The bill doesn’t ask providers to do anything they’re not already required to do. It simply holds them accountable to those standards that would prioritize safety and quality care,” she said “by directing ODHS to require agencies to use state funds to implement enhanced staffing ratios when necessary.”
No one spoke in opposition of the legislation during the committee meeting.
McFeron said passing of the bill would prevent someone else from losing a mother or daughter or friend.
“I can’t bring my mom back, but you guys can save lives by requiring people that are getting additional funding to put it to safety so no one is alone, bleeding, pleading with the people they’re supporting to leave them alone,” she said.
“My mother wasn’t receiving the care she needed in those moments, in those hours, neither were the people she was supporting. … I just know that we have to make a change, or this will happen again.”
Tuesday’s testimony is available online.
Reach reporter Buffy Pollock at 458-488-2029 or bpollock@rv-times.com. Follow her on Twitter @orwritergal.
