If you’ve been working for many years in an aging-related field and want to learn more about how public policy sausages get made, you may want to check out the 2008 John Heinz Senate Fellowship in Issues of the Aging.
Each year, the fellowship selects one mid-career professional in aging or a related field to serve as a member of the U.S. Senate staff for a year. Fellows help draft and advance public policy and legislation aimed at improving the quality of life for older Americans. 2007 fellow Lynn Friss Feinberg of the Family Caregiver Alliance is serving her fellowship in the office of US Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA).
This year’s fellowship will run from September 2008 to August 2009. Applications are due by April 10.
The Direct Care Alliance’s Voices Institute is looking for direct-care worker leaders to participate in its first five-day leadership training intensive. All travel, meal and lodging expenses will be paid for qualified attendees, along with a stipend of $80 a day.
DCA board member Vera Salter, PHI New York Training Manager MariaElena Del Valle, and DCA consultant Bob Hudek developed and will deliver the intensive, which will be held from May 18 to May 23 outside Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
The DCA is asking worker associations and coalitions to nominate candidates for the intensive. Each organization may nominate multiple candidates. Nominations are due March 5.
Visit the DCA website for an invitation letter, application form, or more information.
Two long-term care coalitions are protesting the cuts in Medicare funding proposed by the Bush administration for fiscal year 2009. Both groups warn that the cuts would hurt long-term care recipients and the direct-care workers they rely on.
“From the standpoint of our oldest, most vulnerable seniors and the direct care workers who serve them, the Bush Administration has put forward a budget proposal that is dangerous to every aspect of front line care giving,” says Lisa Cantrell, a co-founder of the National Association of Health Care Assistants and a national spokesperson for the Coalition to Protect Senior Care (CPSC) in a CPSC news release.
“With as much as 70% of nursing home operating costs driven by labor costs, inadequate overall funding may force nursing homes to make difficult decisions that could affect the hundreds of thousands of direct care workers in nursing homes,” echoes Alan G. Rosenbloom, the president of the Alliance for Quality Nursing Home Care, in an Alliance news release.
“Medicaid, a state program to aid the poor, is falling short of providing living wages and benefits to nursing home workers,” says Living Wages and Health Care Out of Reach: A report on the overlooked nursing home workers (pdf), a new report from SEIU Healthcare 775NW. The union surveyed frontline nursing home workers in Washington state and found a median starting wage for CNAs of $9.75 per hour, “well below the living wage of a single adult.”
Another major problem, the report notes, is lack of affordable health insurance. “In a recent survey of over 150 randomly-sampled Washington CNAs, only a quarter reported having health insurance from their employer. Although it is possible that a higher proportion of nursing homes/employers offer insurance to their employees, it is likely that employees are unable to pay the premiums.”
The report calls on the state to solve this problem by increasing the Medicaid funding targeted at improving wages and benefits for ”our much needed, inadequately paid nursing home workers.”
You can find a lot of useful information about the direct-care workforce on the Developing a Quality Workforce section of the newly revamped Institute for the Future of Aging Services (IFAS) website.
The section describes past and current initiatives aimed at stabilizing and supporting the workforce. It also links to more than two dozen policy analyses, how-to issue briefs, and other publications.
IFAS’s approach to developing a quality workforce includes
Explaining the causes of workforce problems and projected trends.
Collaborating with long-term care employers to identify and assess existing models of workforce development and workplace practices.
Developing new workforce development models.
Disseminating lessons learned.
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