Wages and Benefits

Find a clearly written, user-friendly manual developed for use by an individual transitioning into greater independence and adulthood. The toolkit provides comprehensive guidance on planning for personal assistance services and transitioning to independent living. A number of personal stories are included, along with useful questionnaires, checklists, goal development guides, sample plans, activities of daily living worksheets, and extensive PAS hiring, management and training information.

Review the findings of six listening sessions where participants provided input on more effective ways to increase employment of women, veterans, and minorities with disabilities, the identfication of federal and state systems effectively collaborating to achieve successful employment outcomes, and identification of three top issues on which the federal government should focus to support an increase in labor force participation of people with disabilities.

Check out this guide geared toward the participant/consumer on how to hire and manage personal assistants. Written with the goal of promoting self-determination, this user-friendly guide helps the consumer understand their role as employer and covers topics such as determining the supports they need, finding workers and the role of the Fiscal Intermediary. It includes sample forms, worksheets, checklists, job descriptions, as well as a glossary and tips for helping to keep organized.

How does health reform legislation effect eldercare and disability employers and direct-care workers? Review a chart that summarizes eight health-reform provisions that have either taken effect already, or will do so in the near future. These provisions give direct-care workers and their families numerous opportunities to access more affordable health care before 2014. Find a link to this sheet, as well the Health Care for Health Care Workers website, which contains the full series.

This updated resource, the first reflecting a ten year perspective, provides a state-by-state look at wages and wage trends for PHCAs, the fourth fastest growing occupation in the country, and a key job title within the direct care workforce. Prepared as a resource guide on wages for advocates and policymakers concerned with this workforce, the data underscore the problem of low wages for PHCAs, factors contributing to workforce instability and near poverty incomes for this workforce.

What are the key health reform provisions related to investments in direct-care worker training and workforce development? This fact sheet highlights national advisory panels as well as grant opportunities for states and individual employers. Action steps and additional resources are included.

Under a Cooperative Agreement with AoA, the Benjamin Rose Institute on Aging convened a panel of experts on strengthening the LTC workforce. The experts were organized to address five areas of concern: supply of DCWs and family caregivers; retention of these helpers; readiness or capacity of these helpers to provide care; quality of care they provide in terms of outcomes for those in their care; and the impact of the ACA, including the CLASS Act, on family caregivers.

The Benjamin Rose Institute on Aging sponsored PPAR’s Winter/Spring 2010 issue. It includes seven articles written by national experts describing recent and notable changes in LTC policy, with its increasing emphasis on HCBS services. An introductory essay provides a 30-year review of the evolutionary process of LTC. Consumer-directed initiatives, caregiver and workforce issues, maturation of the service delivery system, and a review of recent state-level initiatives are discussed.

Health Affairs has published a special issue devoted entirely to long-term care. Review articles on providers, issues related to Medicare and Medicaid, transition and diversion programs, new state strategies to meet LTC needs, quality of care, demographic issues, policy and financing, health spending, caregivers and the workforce, and palliative care and end-of-life.

Examine a snapshot of workforce competencies that have been identified for professionals who work in LTC settings. It focuses on providers who serve long-term care needs of the older population. The paper also examines whether the competencies are the same or different from what is needed to care for the geriatric population in acute and ambulatory care settings.