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’
I’ve made a lot of graduation speeches in my time, but the one I made at the beginning of this month was really special. I wasn’t asked to talk to the LNAs graduating from the Indiana County Technical Center in Indiana, Pennsylvania, because of my job title or official role. I wasn’t asked by an official from the school. I was invited by the students.
The director of the program told me the students chose the person who had had the greatest impact on them during their year of schooling. It was such an honor to be asked.
On May 12 and 13, I had taught the students about coaching supervision with my PHI colleague Francine Fineman and long-term care consultant Joanne Rader. They were so enthusiastic about what we had to tell them. They understood that they would be overseeing other caregivers’ work in their role as LPNs, so they embraced it from that point of view. They also saw applications for their personal lives.
Continue reading ‘LPNs Apply Coaching Supervision Concepts to Work, Life’
The July issue of The Gerontologist is devoted to findings from the Better Jobs Better Care research and demonstration project. BJBC, which began in 2002 and ended in 2006, 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 initiative involved changing both public policy and employer practice. Demonstration grants were made to groups in Iowa, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Vermont.
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.
Among the findings detailed in the issue:
- Direct-care workers across long-term settings identified more pay, improved communication, better supervision, and being treated with respect as the most important things employers could do to improve jobs.
- After accounting for satisfaction with wages, benefits, and advancement opportunities — good basic supervision was most important in affecting CNAs to stay in their jobs.
- There is a positive correlation between CNA job commitment and resident satisfaction.
- After accounting for satisfaction with wages, benefits, and advancement opportunities, good basic supervision was the most important factor behind commitment to the job. Continue reading ‘Nationwide Initiative to Reduce DCW Turnover Documented’
“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.
Continue reading ‘Amy Hewitt: Direct Support Work is a Highly Skilled Job’
“The residents come to know you better and trust you,” says a CNA of the changes a nursing home experienced after implementing consistent assignment.
The new system also benefits the home’s direct-care workers, according to a one-page report (pdf) by the Iowa Foundation for Medical Care, the Medicare Quality Improvement Organization for Iowa. “The staff have ownership and they are loving it,” says Assistant Administrator Deb Pascoe. Staff chose the neighborhoods they wanted to work in and divided resident caseloads.
The report describes an initiative by Wyndcrest Nursing Home in Clinton, Iowa, which piloted the change on one shift for several months before introducing it on others. “It’s important to remember that change takes time,” Pascoe explains. “Pilot testing provided us with an opportunity to work through problems before implementing it facility-wide.”
Continue reading ‘Iowa Residents, CNAs Reap the Benefits of Consistent Assignment’
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