The July issue of The Gerontologist featured the results of the Better Jobs Better Care initiative, the four-year $15.5 million research and demonstration project that was the largest initiative in the nation ever created to address the high vacancy and turnover rates of direct-care workers by improving the quality of direct-care jobs.

The Institute for the Future of Aging Services (IFAS) just released more materials. Available at bjbc.org, they include a catalog of tools and resources based on the work of BJBC grantees and a report that includes practical applications for key research findings.

Solutions You Can Use: Transforming the Long-Term Care Workforce takes the major findings and examines how aging-services providers can use them to build a quality workforce. The booklet is organized by WHAT WE LEARNED and WHAT IT MEANS TO YOU.

The findings are organized around four themes:

• Where to find new pools of workers
• What interventions improve retention
• The training direct-care workers and nurse supervisors want and need
• How to develop cultural competence

A Crisis With A Solution: Tools and Resources for Transforming the Long-Term Care Workforce is a compilation of the tools and resources used and developed by BJBC and the grantees.

An accompanying 9-minute video features several BJBC providers sharing their journey from a workplace in crisis to one that empowers direct-care workers and is transforming the way they do business. Narrated by Robyn Stone, BJBC national program director and IFAS executive director, it shares the overall lessons learned during the four-year project.

“Our wish is that you use the tools to invest in your staff,” Stone wrote in an opening letter to the catalog.

The multi-state project began in 2002 and ended in 2006 and was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and The Atlantic Philanthropies. IFAS and PHI conceived of BJBC and provided technical assistance to the grantees.