Direct Care Workforce

This report, focused on New Jersey’s Personal Preference program, provides information on workers’ views about issues such as job satisfaction, roles and responsibilities, and ideas for recruiting and retaining new personal care workers. The report also describes similarities and differences between paid family caregivers and non-family caregivers.

This study provides rich data about the experiences of paid workers who care for children under the age of 18 with developmental disabilities in Florida's CCDE program, Consumer Directed Care (CDC). Topics include workers' views about issues such as job satisfaction, roles and responsibilities, and ideas for recruiting and retaining new personal care workers.

Focus groups in Arkansas were created to learn more about home health agency workers and paid workers of clients enrolled in IndependentChoices. This report provides information on workers' views about issues, as well as the similarities and differences between IndependentChoices and agency workers.

Review the findings from a survey of eldercare and disability services employers. While most employers in the state offered employer-sponsored insurance, less than one-fifth of Massachusetts direct-care workers were enrolled in 2009. Based primarily on data from the survey, the main reason for the low number and recommendations are outlined in this report that deals with the impact of Massachusetts health reform on the eldercare and disability services sector.

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.

As part of Research on Program Management Techniques by States to Rebalance their Long Term Care Systems, Final Case Studies were conducted in each State for the time period ending December 2007. These Case Studies focus particularly on the reflections of State government officials on rebalancing goals, accomplishments, and next steps as they reflect on all the State’s experiences in moving towards more community-based services.

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.

Looking for interesting on-line training opportunities? Train.org offers a number of web-based studies, webcasts and seminars. Topics include workforce development, disability, emergency management, evaluation, home care, mental health, program development. You can search by subject or course title such as Ready, Willing and Able, a seminar about assisting people with disabilities during disasters. Many on-line courses are offered at no charge.

PHI Policy Works has released an updated State chart book on wages from personal and home care aides, 1999-2008. The chart book tracks wages in all 50 states and the District of Columbia for the period 1999-2008. It shows that nationally, the median real wage (adjusted for inflation) for personal and home care aides has decreased by 3 percent over nine years, from $7.50 to $7.31.