CONVERSATIONS WITH LEADERS IN CARE: CAN GROUPS WHO WORK IN LONG-TERM CARE UNITE?

Policy and advocacy are crucial tools in the movement to prepare the workforce for our aging population. "The workforce crisis in long-term care is at last getting some attention," says Steven Dawson, president of PHI, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving long-term care by improving the quality of paraprofessional direct-care jobs. "But we have a ways to go to reach policymakers and show them that solutions already exist. The way to provide adequate numbers of quality direct-care workers is not a mystery: Like the rest of us, these workers want training, a decent wage, a full-time job. While such solutions are not complex, it is hard to put together the resources and to muster the political will required."

To convince policymakers to act, the various stakeholders must unite, Dawson said. "The basic problems of care provision are common problems: Everyone on the long-term-care team is undervalued, all along the line, from home health aides and personal attendants to geriatricians and social workers." Even so, he said, coalitions are difficult to build among providers and workers and among the various professions. "Each is resistant to change, looks inward, and protects is own territory." Within the workforce, people on the care team must reach out, Dawson said. "Social workers, for example, must heighten their profile so that more people realize what a crucial role they play in long-term care. And it will take the leaders of these various groups to reach across the professional barriers to form formal coalitions."

To some extent, this is beginning to happen. Dawson named two groups currently coalescing around common workforce policy agendas: Advancing Excellence, a national coalition of long-term-care providers, professionals, and organized labor supported by the Commonwealth Fund; and a "stakeholder table" supported by the John A. Hartford Foundation and The Atlantic Philanthropies that is just now exploring specific policy vehicles to implement the recommendations called for in the recent Institute of Medicine report on the eldercare workforce (see "Aging Groups Respond to IOM Report " above).

"We'll have to wait and see if there is enough goodwill to unite us on our common ground," Dawson said. "If so, we can tap the strength that lies in numbers."

- Adapted from Institute for Geriatric Social Work Newsletter, June 30, 2008.

 

07/08