How training boosts home health caregiver, aide workforce

Training bolsters home health workforce

NMHA is working to offset those caregiver shortages, recently completing its Caring4Cal program designed to train home and community-based caregivers.

The program operated on a $31 million grant from the state of California and allowed individuals already working in or interested in working in home and community-based care positions to receive training in the field. Individuals who completed the training received a $2,750 stipend.

"We were excited to get workers who were willing to advance in their careers a bit from that opportunity, but also we had a large impact of bringing new caregivers into the industry and at least exposing them to the training that's involved. Many of these individuals take care of their family members anyway," said Sara Moore, chief operating officer for NMHA, in the interview. "It exposes them to better training for this opportunity and also the industry itself."

While a training company, Nevvon, facilitated the online training, NMHA was in charge of program recruitment, according to Moore.

But although the Caring4Cal sounds like an excellent opportunity on the surface -- and it indeed is --Moore and her team knew they'd need to work to make participants comfortable joining the program.

"When somebody is getting an incentive, they think, 'is this a scam, right?'" Moore acknowledged. "We've seen that multiple times. Luckily, this is not our first incentive program. We've had a great experience working and walking through that trust process and explaining how the full program is going to work, that they could see it, follow it, receive the payment and then tell their friends about it. too."

NMHA also connected with home health agencies with which it already had relationships.

"This was not the only program in California happening at the same time," Moore noted. "There were other programs that were offering incentives that required different commitments from the agencies."

"We had to spend a lot of time answering their questions and then having even some of their staff go through it to understand, 'okay, this is what they're going to be learning, and this is great value,'" she added. "We work closely with the agency leaders to build the trust within them to then pass that along to their employees."

NMHA also leaned on its connections in the health IT space with the understanding that those companies could be conveners of home health agencies interested in learning more about Caring4Cal.

"That was a powerful way to break down a barrier because all these agencies are getting hit with all kinds of messaging every day to do this, do that, don't do this, don't do that," Harrison said. "Things from the state, things from just their employees, things from the labor department and all these other things. How do you break through that clutter in order to get them to say, 'Hey, take a look at this program, which could be very beneficial to you.'"

That relationship-building was ultimately fruitful. NMHA had originally set a goal of enrolling 10,000 home and community-based caregivers for its training program. After a few months, 30,000 people had expressed interest in the program, 19,000 ultimately enrolled and 13,000 received training certification.

Those numbers are not only a net positive for the growing number of people in California expected to need home caregiving within the next five years but also for the caregivers and agencies themselves.

"In the home health space, recruiting employees and retaining employees are very, very critical," Harrison asserted. Agencies are nothing without their employees."

Caring4Cal served as an opportunity for home health agencies to take care of their employees, who often experience low pay and little opportunity for career growth.

"We urge agencies to now go further to do other things in order to maintain those workers within the industry and continually bring in more workers because there's obviously always turnover," Harrison said.

Using home health to advance health equity

This is all part of NMHA's Health Is For Everybody campaign, which promotes knowledge about health and preventive care among the general public. In an age where health and public health have become widely politicized, NMHA is working to boost understanding about primary and preventive health services.

This effort is especially pronounced as the nation works to close gaps in health outcomes.

"From a health equity perspective, we want to be involved in all of these things to really bring it to the forefront of people's minds," Harrison explained. "We're trying to, in any different way that we can -- through information, through awareness programs, through training, through these grant programs and so on -- to be able to bring that message of health equity, which is access awareness and means so that you can attain your optimal health situation or outcome."

"It's prevention, awareness, getting tested at early detection. Those are really big things at the front of the healthcare system that need to be done," he concluded. "Caregivers will play a big role in that as well, because they need to be trained to be able to understand and spot these things."

Sara Heath has covered news related to patient engagement and health equity since 2015.