Tapping the Power of Peer Mentoring
This is the second in a series of PHI Expert Interviews, which bring you insights from four senior PHI staff. They’re an impressive group - among the nation’s leading experts on long-term care’s direct-care workforce - and collectively they’ve spent decades studying the challenges facing the workforce and how to address them. We think you’ll be interested in what they’ve learned.
Peggy Powell is one of the founders of Cooperative Home Care Associates, the worker-owned home health agency that started PHI, where she served as director of education. Since joining PHI in 1991, she has worked with CHCA and other employers to develop strategies for recruiting, training, supervising, and supporting direct-care staff.
One of those strategies, peer mentoring, is gaining in popularity – and no wonder. Done right, a peer mentor program helps new direct-care workers get oriented to the job and the organization, bolstering their skills and their confidence. It also creates a career ladder for experienced workers.
And that’s not all, as Peggy has learned. Continue reading ‘PHI EXPERT INTERVIEW: Peggy Powell’
The July issue of
A nine-page overview lays out how and why the project came into being, the problems affecting the direct-care workforce, and how awareness of and responsiveness to those problems is changing. The essay is by Robyn Stone (pictured), executive director of the Institute for the Future of Aging Services, and PHI President Steven Dawson. FAS and PHI conceived of BJBC and provided technical assistance to the grantees. Funding was supplied by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and The Atlantic Philanthropies.





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