Lessons learned from the California personal home care aide state training (PHCAST) demonstration

The California Personal and Home Care Aide State Training (PHCAST) program is a 100-hour competency-based training program for personal and home care aides (PHCAs), delivered in the classroom or online. Online training began in year two. Target participants included unemployed and displaced workers seeking entry-level training in health care and PHCAs with no previous training. Evaluation utilized a pre-post test design, comparing previous courses with new standardized competency based curriculum. Data collection at pretraining, post-training, and 6 month follow-up included program completion rates, competency test scores, demographics, prior training and employment, satisfaction with training, knowledge and preparedness, career goals, and employment after 6 months. Nearly 800 individuals completed training to date. The typical trainee, regardless of mode, was female, had a mean age of 47, was Latino or Asian, not married, and no previous home care training. About 62% lived below the poverty level. Most trainees, regardless of delivery mode, were satisfied with the course length, accessibility, class size, and course materials. Most reported increased knowledge, job skills, intent to seek certification and continue in the home or health care field. Challenges included difficulty in 6 month follow-up and long-term tracking of trainees, linking PHCAs to potential employers, development of a state certification process, and the initial high dropout rate for online trainees. PHCAST has increased the number of home care trained workers enabling individuals to age in place. The online component has the capacity to be far reaching, enabling those without access to in-person training to learn PHCA skills.