Recruiting and Retaining a Quality Paraprofessional Long-Term Care Workforce: Building Collaboratives with the Nation's Workforce Investment System

This paper provides the fundamental context of both the long-term care sector and the workforce investment system in order to build understanding among members of each system. It is not intended to be comprehensive but to provide enough information to stimulate dialogue. Section II briefly describes the characteristics of the long-term care paraprofessional workforce. Section III outlines the growth in the long-term care sector. Section IV discusses workforce shortages from an economic perspective and why they exist in the long-term care sector. Section V describes the response of the long-term care sector to the shortage of paraprofessionals. Section VI describes the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) and the role of the workforce system. Section VII provides some examples of workforce investment initiatives in the long-term care sector. Finally, Section VIII presents some opportunities for collaboration. [24 PDF pages]