Recommendations for Establishing a Credentialing System for Iowa’s Direct Care Workforce, (pdf) a recent publication from the Iowa Direct Care Worker Task Force, is a useful tool for advocates in any state who want to create “an accessible, comprehensible, flexible, quality system of education and training for all direct care workers.”
The report documents work to be done to implement recommendations published by the task force in December 2006. Work began on the project last month.
Iowa’s proposed three-tiered credentialing system is intended to ensure that all direct-care workers are adequately prepared for the job. It also aims to make workers’ duties and qualifications clear to the consumers and family members who hire them, to acknowledge their special skills, and to correct the inequities of the current system, which requires training in some settings but not in others even when the same set of services is delivered in both.
The report includes 17 recommendations, a timeline, and detailed lists of criteria, qualifications and resources needed to create:
- A standardized curriculum for all new direct-care workers, regardless of setting
- Educational equivalency with other health care professions
- Standardized qualifications for educators and trainers
- Continuing education requirements for direct-care workers, educators and trainers
- Governance
It also includes an extensive list of specialty skills that should be eligible to receive “endorsements.”
A 16-page implementation plan (pdf) will guide the group’s work, with adjustments as needed as the project progresses.
Elise Nakhnikian, Senior Online Editor
enakhnikian@phinational.org
