Center for Personal Assistance Services Director Charlene Harrington provided testimony at a July 22nd hearing held by the National Commission for Quality Long-term Care. The Commission heard testimony that included a number of recommendations about how to strengthen and support the direct-care workforce. Several of the more than 25 invited speakers discussed the importance of the workforce, including Dr. Harrington, who testified that "the most important measure of quality of care is the amount of nursing staff available to provide care."

Also speaking was another associate of the Center for PAS, Robyn Stone who is the executive director of the Institute for the Future of Aging Services (IFAS). She offered a number of recommendations, including the following:
* Expand the programs and funding for training and career ladder opportunities through the Nurse Reinvestment Act;
* Strengthen the Department of Labor's focus on the training needs of frontline caregivers through its High Growth Job Training Initiative;
* Explore how to interest young people in long-term care as a profession through fellowship and loan forgiveness programs;
* Build long-term care workforce improvement into quality discussions and efforts at the national and state levels;
* Provide incentives to nursing schools and other colleges and universities that train long-term care leaders to redesign their curricula to help their graduates engage in workplace redesign and organizational transformation;
* Provide incentives to employers to "engage in systematic worker-oriented as well as client/resident-directed organizational change and job redesign," increase wages and improve benefits, and offer staff opportunities for professional growth and ongoing education.

Read Harrington's testimony in PDF or HTML format