Recruitment and Retention

What is the Montana MIG grant doing to employ Native Americans with disabilities? Here, two examples are provided in Montana's Native American Conference Brochure and American Indians with Disabilities Survey of Barriers to Employment. These could serve as examples to other states, also looking to reach specific populations.

How can employers attract and retain employees with disabilities? This and other issues having to do with disabled workers are addressed in a brochure sent to Montana employers. This tool includes a self assessment questioner about workplace disability practices, a letter from the governor, a myths and facts section, and resources for more information. While this is meant for Montana residents, this could serve as a template for other states interested in employing more people with disabilities.

Hawaii’s Medicaid Infrastructure Grant held a benefits planning workshop in 2008 to inform the community about ways for disability beneficiaries to return to work. Case managers, consumers and benefits planners were invited to attend. At the conclusion, they were asked to rate their satisfaction with the overall workshop and with each session. The agenda and satisfaction results are presented here. It’s data that could prove helpful to any state interested in planning successful workshops.

There are a number of challenges for the direct service workforce in rural areas. Review an issue brief and a recorded webinar presenting strategies that stakeholders can use to provide high-quality long-term care services and supports. States engaged in development of their direct service workforce can use these to gain knowledge of the challenges and learn about some direct service related strategies that other states and rural agencies have implemented.

This bibliography summarizes current thinking about developing core competencies for all direct care workers, regardless of the setting they work in. It includes recommendations from six state-level reports, two national studies, and the federal Retooling the Health Care Workforce for an Aging America Act.

This report estimates the effects of Cash & Counseling on the caregivers who were providing the most unpaid assistance to adult beneficiaries when those beneficiaries volunteered to participate in the demonstration and completed a baseline interview. The caregivers in this analysis--identified by beneficiaries as their primary informal caregiver at baseline--were interviewed about 10 months later.

This report details the enrollment issues faced during implementation of the program. In addition, the report looks at consumer experiences including issues resulting from acting as an employer and effects on quality of life. The abstract (free) and full report (subscription required) are available.

Workforce3 One, an online resource sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration, has a new Disability and Employment Resource Page to provide employment-related resources for the workforce system. This page outlines promising practices and expands the capacity of the One-Stop Career Center system to serve customers disabilities. The resource page includes videos and podcasts, toolkits and training materials, promising practices, and other materials.

This paper presents a broad overview of the direct-care workforce. The authors examine issues such as wages, benefits, training, worker retention rates, staff satisfaction, and the importance of worker-focused "culture change" initiatives in long-term care settings. They conclude that the quality of direct-care jobs must be increased in order to attract a "stable and competent" workforce, and point to research that suggests ways to create more collaborative, effective, and satisfying jobs.

In 2005 CMS funded a national evaluation by a consortium led by the RAND Corporation to study the implementation and outcomes of ten funded initiatives. These initiatives were meant to improve the recruitment and retention of the Direct Service Community Workforce. Review the report and listen to a recorded webinar where the author's present their findings.