The Office of Disability, Aging and Long-term Care Policy, within the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Planning and Evaluation, has launched a special development initiative to address the critical shortage of paraprofessional workers across the full spectrum of long-term care settings. The project is a partnership between the Institute for the Future of Aging Services, a policy research center within the American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging, and the Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute, a national nonprofit healthcare employment and advocacy organization.

The project team will:

• Collect examples of effective and fully operational practices affecting the recruitment and retention of direct-care workers across the long-term care spectrum. Selected practice profiles are posted in a database on the National Clearinghouse on the Direct Workforce Website. (Create link to profile "home page.") This information is made available to the public free of charge, creating an up-to-date and searchable resource for providers, policymakers and others looking for effective and tested ways to improve worker recruitment and retention.
  
  

• Develop specifications for a new program of demonstration grants designed to bring about changes in provider practice and public policy that reduce high rates of vacancy and turnover among paraprofessional staff and improve the quality of their jobs.
  
  

• Design a public awareness strategy to increase public recognition of the role of the direct-care worker in long-term care. Create a database of promising provider practices designed to improve worker recruitment, retention and job quality and related research and evaluation studies. The database will be accessible through the websites of the National Clearinghouse on the Direct Care Workforce, ASPE, and IFAS.
  
  

• Develop an applied research plan to investigate the nature, causes, and impact of direct-care workforce problems and support select studies of workforce issues. Initial studies include an ethnographic study comparing workers who continue in the long-term care field for many years and workers who choose to leave and the development of a concept paper specifying the requirements for modeling worker supply and demand.
  
  

• Prepare and disseminate three policy briefs on issues influencing the availability of direct-care workers and the efficacy of policy interventions designed to reduce vacancies and turnover. The first policy brief will examine state "wage pass through" initiatives.
  
  

• Prepare and disseminate two working papers: (1) a synthesis of lessons learned from workforce-related research and evaluation studies, public policy and regulatory initiatives and innovative provider and worker practices; and (2) a concept paper analyzing how workforce improvement must be taken into account in developing new models for promoting long-term care quality.