Community partnerships to develop national standards and local capacity for training a high-quality personal home care workforce

Michigan has participated, with five other states, in a federally funded, ACA driven demonstration grant to develop, implement, and test competency-based training models for personal care aides (PCA) who provide in-home care. PCAs are among the fastest growing workforce and play a key role in meeting a significant public health need for affordable long-term care. Currently, a major gap exists between personal care needs and PCA competency as there are no federal competencies or training requirements. This project helps bridge the gap. The Michigan model is predicated on the belief that the success of PCA training requires local community stakeholders to actively participate in all stages of competency, training, and infrastructure development and delivery. Our presentation focuses specifically on the Michigan experience with achieving goals of 1) building community partnerships to develop a systematic process for determining minimum core competencies necessary to provide high-quality personal home care, 2) using these competencies as the basis for a gold-standard training program, 3) developing local capacity, 4) ensuring that the process was community-based, participatory, represented key experts and stakeholders, and included all areas of instruction mandated by the ACA, and 4) robust data collection and analyses to determine effectiveness of process and outcomes. Key findings, lessons learned, and outcomes will be shared that can inform efforts to establish local, state and national PCA standards and training requirements, and PCA training programs, with implications for addressing the gap between practitioner knowledge of best practices and the need for safe, high-quality home care.