National Skills Summit
Innovative Initiatives: Health Care and Child Care
Paraprofessional Health Care Institute and Home
Care Associates of Philadelphia: Training and Retention Program
The
Challenge:
To increase the number of skilled health care paraprofessionals - home health aides, certified nursing assistants, and personal attendants - in the Philadelphia area.
The
Solution:
Offer paraprofessionals training, full-time work, benefits, advancement opportunities, transportation, and a stake in ownership in order to lure and keep them in the industry.
The
Partners:
Paraprofessional Health Care Institute, a non-profit organization in New York, develops worker-owned cooperatives that offer training and retention programs for health care paraprofessionals.
Home Care Associates of Philadelphia, a worker-owned home health care agency, provides paraprofessional job training and employs 80 home health aides serving more than 200 clients monthly.
The
Story:
Yvette Beatty grew up on welfare and faced a future in which she would be dependent on welfare to support herself and her two children. Yvette looked for other options, but she lacked both the training and the education necessary for a living-wage job. She knew that she needed some marketable skills, so she enrolled in a training program at Home Care Associates that prepared her for a job as a home health aide. After completing the four-week training program, HCA hired Yvette as a full-time home health aide. Yvette discovered that she was an excellent caregiver. Highly valued by her clients and held as a model by her supervisors, Yvette has taken on the role of a mentor aide. She takes new prospective trainees out in the field so they can see firsthand what the work of a home health aide is like. After working with HCA for six years, Yvette was recently elected by her sister worker-owners to sit on HCA's Board of Directors. She and other workers hold the majority of the seats on the board, which makes all of the business and leadership decisions of the organization.
Yvette's story takes place within the context of a shortage of home health aides, certified nursing assistants, and personal care attendants so severe that agencies often must turn patients away. To address this shortage, Paraprofessional Health Care Institute and Home Care Associates have worked together to develop a four-week training program to increase the number of skilled health care workers. Yvette is just one of many successful graduates of this program. Foundations, including the Philadelphia Heath Care Trust, the Pew Charitable Trust, and the Community Health Affiliates Foundation, fund the $3,100 per-person cost of training.
However, attracting and training new employees is only the first step for HCA. In order to improve upon the average industry turnover rate of approximately 60 percent yearly, HCA has focused on generating benefits to retain employees. HCA offers its home health aides a wage and benefits package well above what is typically found across the home health industry. HCA aides start at an hourly wage of $7.25, which when combined with shift supplements, paid travel time, earned leave benefits, full employer-paid health insurance, a company-provided pager, and transportation subsidies total a cash value of over $10.50 per hour. Aides also get a raise in their base wage for each year they stay with the company. In addition, because HCA is a worker-owned company, home health aides enjoy a share of the company's end-of-the-year profits, which have paid as high as $700 per worker. HCA also provides the transportation workers need to travel to and from the various urban and suburban home care sites. HCA owns 10 cars that aides can use in their daily commute. This comprehensive employment package provides HCA with a tremendous yearly retention rate of nearly 70 percent - truly remarkable for the health care industry.
A Model of
Innovation:
PHI and HCA are working to provide home health care workers and other paraprofessional health workers reasons to stay in the industry, such as owning and participating in the management of their organizations. These workers will be in great demand as the baby boomer generation ages and the health industry transitions from providing care in institutions to home settings. PHI and HCA have discovered how to attract and keep people in this expanding field.
Contacts:
Andy Van Kleunen, Director of Workforce Policy
Paraprofessional Health Care Institute (PHI)
349 East 149th Street, Suite
401
Bronx, New York 10451
718-402-7766 (p)
718-585-6852 (f)
Stefanie Fine, President
Home Care Associates of
Philadelphia
1315 Walnut Street, Suite 832
Philadelphia, PA 19107
215-735-0677 (p)
215-735-0644 (f)
Highlight
Quote:
"You can't get on the road to success unless you can first get on the road. I commend Home Care Associates for including transportation as a part of their exceptional program."
-U.S. Secretary of Labor Alexis M. Herman
Two Tiered Training: Job Readiness and Technical Skills
Many beginning workers need job readiness skills to increase their personal effectiveness as much as they need the technical skills for a specific job or occupation. Job readiness training improves their chances for long-term career success and provides employers with a more stable and productive workforce. Employers told the National Skills Summit that the most effective job readiness training includes:
- Communication and leadership skills -- necessary for any worker to succeed and advance;
- Goals-setting and self-sufficiency in such skills as budgeting, personal finance, and overcoming substance abuse;
- Reading, writing, and arithmetic -- basic, essential skills that are sometimes lacking;
- Interpersonal skills, filling out job applications, interviewing tactics, and appropriate workplace conduct - skills that enable the new worker to succeed.
 |
 |
|
 |
||
