Agenda and conference materials

For people who have nothing to do with farming, long-term care advocates and analysts sure talk a lot about silos. And no wonder, considering the many ways in which the people who receive long-term care services and the people who assist them get segregated from — and often pitted against — one another. Just for a start, there’s nursing homes vs. home care vs. assisted living vs. group homes. There’s people with dementia vs. people with developmental disabilities vs. people with chronic illnesses vs. people with psychological disabilities. There’s Medicaid vs. private pay. You get the picture.

But long-term care providers and recipients from two of the biggest silos - the ones marked “aging” and “people with disabilities” - came together last week, at the 2008 Symposium on Strengthening the HCBS Direct Service Workforce. And the common interest that united them was the need to strengthen and support the home- and community-based direct-care workforce.

The different sectors have different names for their frontline workers (direct service worker, direct service professional, direct support professional, etc.) But the same issues affect workers – and, in turn, clients – across settings. “I met people from all over the country, and everyone’s got the same problems. So it was clear that this is a national issue. There was even a woman from Hawaii in one of my sessions,” says Francine Fineman, the Pennsylvania Training and Organizational Development Specialist for PHI.

Presenters outlined those issues, highlighted research findings that shed light on them, and discussed both federal and state initiatives and employer best practices to address them. (The graphic above is from a presentation by PHI’s Dorie Seavey.) Highlights included the lunchtime showing on Thursday of Higher Ground, a video in which direct-care workers from New Orleans talk about how they assisted their clients during and after Hurricane Katrina.

The May 8-9 conference was sponsored by the National Direct Service Workforce Resource Center with the support of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Department of Labor.

Elise Nakhnikian, Senior Online Editor
enakhnikian@phinational.org