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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 [...]

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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, [...]

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“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 [...]

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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 [...]

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“I’ve seen a tremendous change in the view of direct-care workers,” says researcher Barbara J. Bowers. “I don’t think you’ll find a lot of people in long-term care any more who say ‘They’re lazy, they’re incompetent, they don’t know anything.’ I think there’s a tremendous amount of respect. “The trouble is, managers think it’s their [...]

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Members of the Iowa CareGivers Association (ICA) lobbied their legislators on January 29, talking about the need for better pay, better benefits, and better training and education for Iowa’s direct-care workers. The caregivers also asked their legislators about their personal experiences with caregiving, as part of a push by the ICA to collect and publish [...]

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