About PHI
PHI works to improve the lives of people who need home or residential care—by improving the lives of the workers who provide that care. Our goal is to ensure caring, stable relationships between consumers and workers, so that both may live with dignity, respect and independence.
With nearly 50 staff, PHI works to strengthen our nation’s long-term care direct-care workforce, which includes nearly 3 million home health aides, certified nurse aides, and personal care attendants. PHI's programs activities develop recruitment, training, supervision, and client-centered caregiving practices—along with the public policies necessary to support those practices. PHI’s premise is that creating quality jobs for direct-care workers is essential to providing high-quality, cost-effective services to long-term care consumers: Quality Care through Quality Jobs.
Pathways to Independence
In New York City, PHI sponsors “Pathways to Independence,” a home care service and training network that includes:
- Cooperative Home Care Associates, an 1100-worker, employee-owned home care agency in the South Bronx
- The SKILL Center, which trains more than700 inner-city women annually to become home health aides
- and Independence Care System, a nonprofit managed long-term care program, currently serving more than 1200 members living with physical disabilities. PHI’s Pathways system totals over $90 million in annual services.
A National Presence
Through its technical assistance practice, PHI helps providers across the long-term care spectrum adapt field-tested practices to fit their workforce and consumer needs. A recognized leader in long-term care workforce policy, PHI also works with federal agencies such as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the U.S. Department of Labor to help create a more stable direct-care workforce. PHI’s state-based policy and practice experts work with providers, consumers, and worker/labor organizations in over a dozen states, with field staff in New York, New England, Pennsylvania and Michigan.
PHI also staffs the National Clearinghouse on the Direct Care Workforce, a national ”on-line library” of news, research, best practices, and other information to solve the direct-care staffing crisis in long-term care. The Clearinghouse currently receives more than 30,000 web visits each month.
Integration of Practice & Policy
Our expertise in integrating practice and policy has made PHI a valued partner to both industry stakeholders and national foundations. For example, in affiliation with the Institute for the Future of Aging Services, PHI was named the national technical assistance provider for Better Jobs / Better Care, a four-year research and demonstration project funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and The Atlantic Philanthropies. In addition, the John A. Hartford Foundation and The Atlantic Philanthropies are co-funding the PHI Center for Coaching Supervision & Leadership, with a four-year, $4.7 million commitment.
