The following are new projects started by the Workforce project of the Center for Personal Assistance Services.

For the Assisted Secretary for Planning & Evaluation (ASPE), Dept of Health & Human Services, this project will evaluate payments to parent and spouse caregivers, advance pay, and restaurant vouchers, under California's IHSS Plus Waiver Program. Led by Robert Newcomer (Principal Investigator) and Teresa Scherzer (Co-Principal Investigator), the project is being conducted in collaboration with Research Triangle Institute and the California Department of Social Services.

For the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), Newcomer and Scherzer are leading an Assessment of State PAS Worker Injury Reporting Infrastructure. The project involves a survey of states to describe the occupational injury reporting systems, and the type of of injury prevention training, and workers compensation and other benefits available to the PAS work force. The project is scheduled for completion in April 2006.

For the University of California, San Francisco, School of Nursing, Scherzer is leading a project on work-related injury in Personal Assistance Services. The project examines independent providers' (i.e., consumer directed workers) experiences of and responses to occupational injury and disability - especially issues surrounding access to workers' compensation benefits and injury-related medical care. The data will be used to develop survey questions.

For the University of California Labor and Employment Fund, Scherzer is leading "Occupational injury in PAS: The impact of institutional arrangements." This project expands the School of Nursing-funded sample, to include agency-employed PAS workers. The purpose of the study is to compare their experiences of injury, especially access to workers' compensation benefits and injury-related medical care.