by Geralyn Magan
Two Richmond home care agencies are testing a multi-pronged intervention to bolster the home care profession in their community. The LeadingAge LTSS Center is designing the project’s evaluation.
Two organizations in Richmond, VA, are testing out a four-pronged approach they hope will bolster the home care profession by acknowledging the value of professional care providers and increasing their retention rates. The pilot programs, which are being implemented separately by Jewish Family Services and Family Lifeline, involve:
- Increasing the compensation that professional caregivers receive.
- Offering subsidies to increase caregiver access to transportation.
- Providing high-quality training and career advancement activities.
- Improving the capacity of agencies to track data and measure outcomes.
The LeadingAge LTSS Center @UMass Boston is developing a plan to evaluate the outcomes from both pilot projects. The Richmond Memorial Health Foundation is funding the interventions and the evaluation.
During the first phase of the project, LTSS Center researchers Robyn Stone, Verena Cimarolli, and Natasha Bryant met with representatives of Jewish Family Services and Family Lifeline to better understand their planned interventions.
The researchers will use their expertise in the home care field to:
- Suggest needed modifications to the organizations’ interventions.
- Review the training materials being used during the interventions.
- Develop a plan for evaluating the intervention and its impact on care providers.
- Review current data collection processes employed by the two organizations and suggest options for additional data collection mechanisms or modifications to current data collection mechanisms.
“We’re looking at a local, multi-faceted intervention that’s testing four changes we’re hypothesizing will improve retention and help build a quality, stable workforce,” says LTSS Center Co-Director Robyn Stone. “The LeadingAge membership wants to better understand how we can address the worker shortage. We believe this project could help us learn lessons that we can then apply to other communities around the country.”