The Long-Term Care Foundation is also the organization created by the Adult Family Home Council to develop and manage the Adult Family Home Training Network to provide training, workforce development and other services to adult family home operators and staff. Funding for the training network comes from a portion of the training benefit negotiated in the collective bargaining agreement between the Adult Family Home Council and the State of Washington. Funding began in 2020 and will be ongoing to support the maintenance and enhancement of the network.
We strengthen workforce development in adult family homes by providing ongoing human resources education, guidance, and support, as well as assistance in recruiting and training additional caregivers. We offer a series of webinars on HR Best Practices as well as specialized training on the use of the ProviderOne payment system. We provide guidance, tools, and templates on a variety of HR topics, from recruitment, hiring, and training to performance management, discipline, and termination. We have created an Employee Handbook for adult family homes to use as a template and plan to develop a video library of our webinars and presentations that will be available upon demand. Many of these materials, including the Employee Handbook, may be found in the Resources section of our website at www.longtermcarefoundationwa.org/resources.
Through our pilot program, we provide funding to pay for the training required for sponsored individuals working in eligible adult family homes to become certified as Home Care Aides (HCAs) or Certified Nursing Assistants (CNAs). We also reimburse their adult family homes for the time it takes for these employees to complete the training and certification process. Also, we will we provide funding to pay for the training for sponsored individuals working in eligible adult family homes who wish to enhance their skills and further develop their careers by completing an approved HCA/CNA Bridge Program, Adult Education, or AFH Administrator Training. For more information and to apply for admission to the pilot program, please visit www.longtermcarefoundationwa.org/pilotprogram.
Our Workforce Development Team: Shereice Brown (Workforce Development Manager), Zenaida Almodovar (Workforce Development Specialist), and Cassheina Penfield (Recruiting Specialist), are continuing to develop human resource best practice materials for adult family homes and provide them with ongoing HR support. They also administer our pilot program and assist adult family homes in recruiting new caregivers. You can reach Shereice at shereice@ltcfwa.org, Zenaida at zenaida@ltcfwa.org, and Cassheina at cassheina@ltcfwa.org.