Direct Care Workforce

The VNSNY HHA Partnering Collaborative was designed to better integrate professional and paraprofessional services and employ established principles of quality improvement to achieve two main goals: improving the quality of work life of home care paraprofessionals, and increasing nurses' and aides' support for patients' improvement in key ADLs. This brief describes the key components of the model, implementation challenges and successes, and the results and implications from the evaluation.

This report describes the Cooperative Healthcare Network. This national group of affiliated long-term care providers and training organizations, uses a standardized recruitment approach to attract and retain high quality direct service professionals through a targeted outreach and rigorous application process.

This report provides an overview of the activities of the Nursing Assistant Institute. The Nursing Assistant Institute was created to develop and implement enduring solutions to the nursing assistant shortage in central Virginia. The report looks at the activities and impact of this program.

This issue introduces long-term care providers to peer mentoring, an innovative strategy that has been shown to significantly improve retention among direct-care workers. Implementing peer mentor programs at home care agencies and in nursing facilities, we identify the benefits of mentoring programs, define the peer mentor’s role, discuss critical mentoring skills, & outline the key design elements that long-term care organizations need to consider when developing their own peer mentor programs.

This report summarizes information gathered and analyzed during State One of Contract #3353, the feasabillity study for providing access to health insurance for Personal Care Workers in the state of Vermont.

This report is a product of collaboration between HHS and DOL in response to the requests from the U.S. Congress. Staff at these Departments worked collaboratively to share information and data pertaining to direct care workers in long-term care settings and to develop a joint set of recommendations for the future. This report includes information on informal caregivers, direct care workers, and paraprofessional direct services workers.

The overall goal of this project presented in this proposal is to determine the feasibility of adapting an existing cultural competence organizational assessment protocol for application in nursing facilities, in particular, skilled nursing settings, so that they can assess their organizational cultural competence as well as use results to develop strategies for improvement. Proposed by SUNY Dept. of Preventative Medicine, Brooklyn, NY.

The question “How do we know cultural competence when we see it?” prompted HRSA to sponsor a project to develop indicators of cultural competence in health care delivery organizations. The tool is intended to 1)develop an analytic framework for assessing cultural competence in health care delivery organizations; 2)identify specific indicators that can be used in connection with this framework; and 3) assess utility, feasibility and practical application of the framework and its indicators.

Long term care facilities need qualified and caring staff to provide health care and support services to their elderly and disabled residents. Facilities offer competitive wages and benefits, flexible work schedules and opportunities for professional advancement. For those considering a career in long term care the website is an excellent resource. The site also offers information on education and training programs, upcoming career events and scholarship opportunities.

Workers are affected by chronic conditions in two critical ways — by their own conditions and by the need to care for family members with chronic conditions. Better health technology and disease management programs, as well as flexible work policies, are helping many people affected by chronic conditions function in the workplace. Changes in the workplace need not be expensive, and policies and programs that address the needs of workers are beneficial to employees and employers alike.