Workforce Analysis: Why Quality Jobs Matter |
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Who Are Direct-Care Workers?
By the National Clearinghouse on the Direct Care Workforce, November 2006. (2 pgs). A brief overview of the direct-care workforce, this fact sheet summarizes the different direct-care positions and associated responsibilities, the demographics of the workforce, wages and benefits, and the expected growth in these positions over the next decade. Español (pdf). |
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Family Care and Paid Care: Separate Worlds or Common Ground?
Better Jobs Better Care Issue Brief #5. By Dorie Seavey. Institute for the Future of Aging Services, June 2005. (12 pgs). Family caregiving and paid caregiving are typically treated as two separate worlds, though, in actuality, they often interface, with paid caregivers substituting for or supplementing family caregiving. This issue brief focuses on the intersection of family and paid care-what it looks like now and how it could be shaped in the future in order to promote high quality long-term care.
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The Cost of Frontline Turnover in Long-Term Care
By Dorie Seavey. Better Jobs Better Care Practice and Policy Report. Institute for the Future of Aging Services, October 2004. (33 pgs.). Arguing that the cost of frontline turnover is higher than many realize, Seavey makes a case for developing more accurate measures. The direct cost of turnover is a least $2,500 per frontline worker, which adds up to nearly $2.5 billion per year in extra costs for taxpayers. |
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Long-Term Care Financing and The Long-Term Care Workforce Crisis: Causes and Solutions
By Steven L. Dawson and the Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute. Citizens For Long Term Care, 2003. (30 pgs.) This paper examines the emerging "care gap" in long-term care and the negative impact of staff shortages on the three primary stakeholders: consumers, providers, and workers. It recommends a national strategy--integrating both federal and state policy into a comprehensive system of long-term support and services--to address the direct-care crisis. |
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Direct Care Health Workers: The Unnecessary Crisis in Long Term Care
By Steven L. Dawson and Rick Surpin. The Aspen Institute, 2001. (34 pgs.) The authors examine the structure of long-term care, its financing, and the current labor crisis, arguing for sectorwide restructuring supported by new labor, welfare, and health care policies. |
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Direct Care Health Workers: You Get What You Pay For
By Steven L. Dawson and Rick Surpin. Generations, Vol. XXV, No. 1. Spring 2001. (6 pgs.) This paper examines labor supply and demand and suggests that improving the price of labor, through changes in policy and practice, is the only way to attract workers to long-term care. |
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Toward a Stable and Experienced Caregiving Workforce
By Mary Ann Wilner. Generations. Vol. XXIV, No. 3. Winter 2001. (11 pgs.) Wilner reviews some of the mechanisms available for establishing a stable workforce for consumer-directed care. |
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The Home Health Aide: Scare Resource in a Competitive Marketplace
By Steven L. Dawson and Rick Surpin. Care Management Journals, Vol. 2, No.4. Winter 2000. (6 pgs.) Noting that labor has become a scarce resource, this paper suggests that employers must create higher quality jobs for home care workers to successfully compete for workers in today's economy |
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Who Will Care for Mother Tomorrow?
By Andy Van Kleunen, and Mary Ann Wilner. Journal of Aging & Social Policy, Vol. 11, No. 2/3. 2000. (11 pgs.) This essay confronts the caregiving crisis by offering a closer look at paraprofessional caregivers and the nature of their jobs, summarizing some of the public policies that currently shape the quality of those jobs, and proposing some possible steps that policymakers could take to start rebuilding our nation's direct-care workforce. |
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Paraprofessionals on the Front Lines: Improving Their Jobs--Improving the Quality of Long-Term Care
By Mary Ann Wilner and Ann Wyatt. AARP. 1998. (75 pgs.) A conference background paper prepared for the AARP Long-Term Care Initiative, this paper explores the role of the paraprofessional in long-term care and highlights the relationship between the paid caregiver and the consumer. |
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Confronting the Decline of Paraprofessional Care
By Steven L. Dawson. Presentation before the AARP National Conference: Paraprofessionals on the Frontlines. September 1998. (8 pgs). Dawson advocates reshaping policy and practice in ways that value the frontline worker and allow frontline workers to bring more value to long-term care. |
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Why Workforce Development Should Be Part of the Long-Term Care Quality Debate
By Robyn I. Stone, Steven L. Dawson, and Mary Harahan. American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging, October 2003. (12 pgs.). Arguing that the quality of long-term care—i.e., resident clinical and quality of life outcomes—is significantly influenced by the quality of direct-care jobs, the authors review research in this area, identify barriers to integrating a workforce perspective into long-term care quality assessments, and propose research activities that would further explicate the link between workforce development and resident outcomes.
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