In early April 2020, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts partnered with Northeastern University to stand up a website that allowed facilities to enter information about their workforce needs into a database for workers looking to either volunteer or find paid jobs in institutions. The state was also able to access the information and easily assess where the highest need for staffing support across the state existed. Impressed by the Massachusetts model, ADvancing States wanted to provide it to all states and territories as part of our COVID-19 response.
On April 15, Martha Roherty, Executive Director, approached the Centene Corporation to see if they would assist ADvancing States financially so that we could build a similar website for every state, and they agreed to do so immediately. Ultimately, in order to expedite the development of this resource, we decided to use Centene’s amazing IT team to develop the website. Over the next week, Centene’s IT department worked 24/7 to develop this tool that is owned by ADvancing States so that we can provide a functional resource to the states as quickly as possible. We are extremely grateful for the time and effort that they have provided to our association.
ConnectToCareJobs.com was the first iteration of this platform and was designed to provide state, regional and national data on workforce shortages. ADvancing States worked with Centene to ensure the platform could provide workforce data to states so that they could compare their needs to other states.
ADvancing States and Altarum built Direct Care Careers, from the experience of both organizations on policy and practice, keeping the online jobs registry and employer/employee matching service, and adding many more services to create a flexible IT infrastructure for state workforce development and expansion. The Direct Care Careers platform supports a range of additional functionalities, including credential tracking, workforce training requirements, and available training programs, services that different types of workers are permitted to provide, individual worker and employer preferences.