What lessons can state-run training programs for personal and home care aides hold for individual providers of long-term services and supports (LTSS)?
Plenty, if you’re talking about the Personal and Home Care Aide State Training Demonstration Program (PHCAST).
Authorized by the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the PHCAST demonstration program provided grants to help 6 states develop or expand training programs for personal and home care aides. PHCAST programs in California, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, and North Carolina spent 3 years developing those training programs and training workers in 10 legislated core competencies. The grantees utilized both online and classroom settings for the training.
The LeadingAge Center for Applied Research (CFAR) helped to conduct an ACA-mandated evaluation of the PHCAST program. LeadingAge members can learn 3 important lessons from the evaluation’s final report.
Lesson #1: Good Training Matters
The PHCAST program demonstrates that good training really matters.
PHCAST trainees’ satisfaction with their training programs ranged from 92% to 100%, which says a lot about the quality and impact of those programs.
Most important, trainees believed they had more knowledge and skills after completing the training. As a result, the quality of their post-training employment experience was much enhanced.
Lesson #2: Don’t Try This Alone
There’s no need to forge a solitary path when you’re looking to upgrade the training of either prospective or current workers. Developing partnerships early in the process helps with buy-in for the training program and creates a sustainable infrastructure and resource for the training.
Community colleges and workforce organizations were important resources to the PHCAST grantees, and they could also be valuable resources to individual providers of aging services.
PHCAST programs collaborated with workforce organizations, state agencies, and private sector entities to design their training curricula. They worked with high schools and community colleges, as well as private workforce training organizations, to deliver that training. Many grantees forged ties with professional associations in the LTSS field. Others engaged consumers and community organizations in their work.
The partners you choose to help you train workers will depend on the makeup of your local community. But the PHCAST experience demonstrates clearly that the pool of potential partners is probably larger than you think. You have much to gain by being creative as you bring a variety of groups to the table to explore mutual goals and work together to strengthen the local workforce.
Lesson #3: Support Trainees So They Succeed
One of the most powerful findings of the PHCAST evaluation is the important role that ancillary supports played in the success of PHCAST trainees. Those supports were largely responsible for the fact that individuals who joined PHCAST training programs were more likely to finish those programs than trainees in similar programs.
The supports offered by individual PHCAST grantees varied. Some programs provided access to childcare and transportation. Others focused on providing mentors and stipends or scholarships. Some programs even found that offering food during daylong training sessions helped ensure that trainees stuck with the program.
I can’t tell you what services you should offer prospective employees as they train for jobs in your organization. That’s because these supports won’t be effective unless they are tailored to the specific needs of your population of prospective workers.
That means you have to get to know prospective workers pretty well. You don’t have to hire a research firm to find out about the challenges facing trainees. But having frank conversations with your current workers could help.
Ask those workers about the challenges they face as they try to balance family and work life. Their answers should give you valuable insights into what challenges are facing the individuals you’d like to join your team.
Why PHCAST is Important
It’s tempting to dismiss the PHCAST findings because they focus on state-sponsored programs to train workers. But that would be a mistake.
The PHCAST grantees took innovative steps to create a pipeline of competent workers for LTSS organizations in their states. Given the shortage of home and community-based workers that we’ll all be facing over the next few decades, it makes sense to learn as much as we can from the lessons these successful programs offer.