“Just yesterday my son’s caregiver quit…she couldn’t provide care for my son because she didn’t have care for her own children. It’s a vicious cycle,” says one of the long-term care stakeholders interviewed for a report from the Texas Direct Service Workforce (DSW) Initiative.

Stakeholder Recommendations to Improve Recruitment, Retention, and the Perceived Status of Paraprofessional Direct Service Workers in Texas (pdf) distills input from key stakeholders into 14 recommendations on how to improve turnover and the perceived status of the state’s direct service workers.

With the help of PHI, whose technical assistance was supplied to the project by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ National DSW Resource Center, the initiative divided the recommendations into compensation, opportunity, and support – the same three categories used in PHI’s Nine Elements of a Quality Job.

Perhaps the most important outcome of the initiative, according to the report, is that it “raised awareness of DSW issues at the state, regional, and local level.” But the stakeholder recommendations it gathered may have a life beyond the end of the project. The Texas Direct Service Workforce Advisory Committee prioritized the 14 recommendations, submitting six to the state’s Promoting Independence Advisory Committee:

1. Offer direct service workers a livable wage and adopt measures to ensure investment in the direct service workforce
2. Offer direct service workers benefits
3. Make training accessible to direct service workers
4. Employ effective recruitment strategies including involving direct service workers in the development of best practices and targeted recruitment
5. Establish direct service worker job standards
6. Recognize and reward the contributions of paraprofessional direct service workers

The stakeholders interviewed included national experts, lead agency representatives, members of community groups, advocates, direct service workers and their employers, consumers, and state legislators.

Elise Nakhnikian, Senior Online Editor
enakhnikian@phinational.org