Health Care for Home Care Aides

By Charissa Raynor, Executive Director

As the largest non-profit school of its kind in the country, the Training Partnership has a straightforward, yet bold purpose to research, develop, and deliver high quality learning experiences and workforce development supports to long-term care workers so they in turn can deliver high quality care to older adults and people with disabilities. By 2020, 12 million older adults will need long-term care services.  It isn’t surprising then that the U.S. Department of Labor counts Home Care Aides as their No. 1 fastest growing healthcare occupation between now and 2018. This means that the call for a qualified and committed home care workforce has never been greater than it is today.

Home Care Aides provide critical and complex support to older adults and people with disabilities living at home. Their work is sometimes misunderstood to be unskilled, although this couldn’t be farther from the truth. Many other healthcare professions at their inception -- including nursing, for example -- were similarly misunderstood to be unskilled. Historically, home care was, like many healthcare professions, the responsibility of family members and friends, not professionals, who had informally developed expertise through trial and error. In home care, as family units have become geographically dispersed, more women have entered the workforce, women have had fewer children and divorce rates have increased, family provided care has declined and demand for professional Home Care Aides has grown.

In addition, the home care population is increasingly older and sicker with complex chronic disease which means that demand for professional Home Care Aides is not only growing in terms of volume, but also in terms of the complexity of care that they provide. They support people with dementia like end-stage Alzheimer’s disease, developmental disabilities, mental illness like schizophrenia, and complex physical disabilities. They are also increasingly playing a role in the coordination of care – serving as a communication hub linking the consumer and care team to help prevent unnecessary emergency room visits and hospitalizations.

It is against this backdrop of the birth of a new healthcare profession that the Training Partnership’s work is unfolding. As with most other new professions, training is an integral part of success. It shifts the workforce from one characterized by low or no training and poor quality care to one known for high quality training that leads not only to high quality care, but lower turnover and vacancy rates.
Our team is driven by a strong sense of urgency to help move this dial and support a future where older adults and people with disabilities have ready access to a qualified and stable home care workforce and where workers are empowered with the knowledge and skills they need to provide quality care. Our fiscal year 2010 accomplishments demonstrate progress:

• Opening our doors to deliver training to more than 40,000 students statewide with our first classes held on Jan. 4, 2010;
• Rigorous research and development to create evidenced based, adult centered learning experiences that will meet the new I-1029 standards going into effect January 2011; and
• Refining the infrastructure that is needed to administer training to more students than any community college in Washington state – by many fold. 
• Our work has been recognized nationally as a promising model including acknowledgement by the U.S. Department of Labor, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and our congressional contingent including Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell.

We can’t do any of this alone and are grateful for strong partners including SEIU Healthcare 775NW, leading home care agencies, the State of Washington, consumer groups, and the higher education and workforce development communities.

As we stand at the brink of this new and important healthcare profession being born in Washington state, we look forward to next year and continuing to do our part in meeting the urgent call for a stable and qualified home care workforce in Washington state.