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Workforce Investment Boards Can Help Providers Recruit, Retain Workers
February 24, 2006

A 16-page issue brief from the Better Jobs Better Care initiative explains how long-term care providers can increase the supply of direct-care workers and improve the stability of the workforce by partnering with government-funded workforce development initiatives.

Long-term care has not yet captured its share of federal Workforce Investment Act funding, according to Engaging the Public Workforce Development System: Strategies for Investing in the Direct Care Workforce. This is partly because most state or local workforce investment boards (WIBs) know little about long-term care, and view direct-care jobs as unskilled and dead-end. In addition, many long-term care employers see direct-care workers as easy to replace, and thus accept high turnover rates as part of doing business.

Both parties must change their view of direct-care work in order to partner effectively, writes author Dorie Seavey, a labor economist with the Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute. ''A shared understanding is essential that the low level of compensation and training of direct-care jobs is not an 'innate' characteristic of this work, but rather an attribute that can and must be changed if the long-term care field is to respond successfully to the inexorable growth in demand for its services.''

The issue brief profiles five successful initiatives and outlines the lessons and insights they illustrate. These include the following:

• Effective long-term, structural solutions to alleviating workforce shortages in long-term
  care ultimately require going beyond doing ''more of the same.'' They require addressing
  underlying aspects of industry practice and job structure that cause high rates of turnover and vacancy, and lower the quality of care. In addition to low wages, the chief causes of turnover and vacancy are poor training, ineffective supervisory practices, and lack of career ladders.
  
  
• On the workforce development side, long-term care needs to be viewed as a viable field and direct-care occupations as skilled jobs whose quality can be raised by interventions.
  
  
• On the employer side, long-term care providers need to see the business case for improved recruitment, retention and culture change. They also need to recognize
  that the public workforce system potentially has useful resources to bring to bear in helping improve these jobs. They can help shape the policies that determine the distribution of those resources by assuming leadership roles in their local WIBs.

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