“I can honestly say that I love being a Shahbaz, and so do my fellow Shahbazim,” Edna Hess told the senators at a July 23 U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging hearing.

Hess worked for years as a CNA at the Lebanon Valley Brethren Home in Palmyra, Pennsylvania, becoming a Shahbaz (the Green House® name for direct-care workers) when the home converted to the Green House® model nine months ago. Since then, she told the committee, not a single Shahbaz has left. “This a big improvement over my facility’s 23 percent annual turnover rate for nursing assistants, and an even bigger improvement over the national turnover rate for nursing assistants, which I understand to be slightly over 70 percent per year.”

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A recent “listening session” on the direct-care workforce for Wisconsin legislators demonstrated the power — and the limitations — of capturing lawmakers’ attention with personal testimonials.

Family members attested to the importance of paid caregivers, employers discussed the increasing difficulty of recruiting enough workers, and direct-care workers talked about the difficulty of surviving on their wages as gas prices and other expenses increase.

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“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.

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“If I had only one sentence, this would be it: Direct support work is a highly skilled job,” says Amy Hewitt.

“It’s not viewed that way by society – or, frankly, by many employers – but not everybody can do this job. You have to be smart; you have to be able to problem solve; you have to be flexible and a quick thinker. You also need patience and empathy and creativity. We’re not going to get anywhere in terms of policy advocacy or getting the supports we need in place without clearly articulating that this is a highly skilled job.”

Hewitt is a senior research associate at the University of Minnesota’s Research and Training Center on Community Living. The center’s mission is to support community living for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities – and that has led to a focus on strengthening and supporting the direct support workforce.

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When long-term care opinion leaders were surveyed about the challenges facing our long-term care delivery and financing system, the challenge they named most often was the workforce.

The first national survey of what long-term care experts think about the state of long-term care in the U.S.A. and how it can be reformed tallied the responses of 1,147 people (44.5 percent of those polled) to an online questionnaire. According to The Commonwealth Fund Long-Term Care Opinion Leader Survey: Top-Level Findings, (pdf), a one-page summary of its findings, the survey was intended to “help move the LTC reform debate forward,” as we cannot afford to wait any longer to prepare for the coming baby boomer age wave.

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A blog sponsored by the College of Direct Support posts stories for direct support professionals, consumers, and other members of the direct support community, inviting feedback and input.

On the same page, you’ll find a link to the CDS’s podcasts, which will include A Day in the Life of a DSP.

Currently on that page is a video about Patrick Jordan, which shows him in action while his father (pictured above with Patrick) tells his story. The Jordans are participants in a Minnesota residential program that has transformed their lives, allowing Patrick to achieve a new degree of independence.

“He’s not in a fishbowl any more,” says Patrick’s delighted father. “His needs haven’t gone away, but our ability to approach them in a more personal, more respectful fashion has made a huge difference to him.”

Elise Nakhnikian, Senior Online Editor
enakhnikian@phinational.org