CHARLESTON — The plan to fill the gap in direct-care workers involves a familiar concept — bringing retirees back into the workforce.
West Virginia has a shortage of teachers and service personnel, particularly, bus drivers. County boards of education have been petitioning the West Virginia Board of Education to incentivize retired teachers back into the classroom, and a bill before the Legislature supports putting retired bus drivers back behind the wheel.
Similar tactics have been employed to plug shortages in the Department of Health and Human Resources.
Now, officials are looking to copy and paste the idea onto the direct-care workforce, which needs nearly 20% more workers, according to a presentation given to lawmakers Friday by Jane Marks, state volunteer president for AARP-West Virginia.
As of 2021, there were 23,000 direct-care workers in West Virginia, AARP-West Virginia state director Gaylene Miller said.
The 60-plus population is expected to grow by 15% in the next few years and, by 2030, one in four West Virginians will be 65 or older, Marks said. The state has 165,000 people who are categorized as at-risk for needing formal or informal direct care, she said.
“That means they’re right on the cusp. At any point in time, they could have a fall, encounter an illness, or have some change in their status that would require them to have this kind of support,” Marks said.
Marks said 15,000 West Virginians receive nursing home or community-based care through Medicare. Research by John Deskins, director of the Bureau of Business and Economic Research at the Chambers College of Business and Economics at West Virginia University, in 2020 showed the state has 15% fewer workers than are needed to meet this demand.
“And of course the pandemic simply amplified this problem,” Marks said.
West Virginia has a shortage of about 4,000 workers, Marks said. In response to the shortage, AARP-West Virginia and the Department of Health and Human Services launched the West Virginia Direct Care Task Force in June with the goal of developing legislative and regulatory recommendations to increase the state’s direct-care workforce, and improve recruitment and retention. The task force focused on ways to improve wages and benefits, provide more training and education, and improve job satisfaction.
Sen. Rollan Roberts, R-Raleigh, said he hopes the plan includes West Virginia’s retirees and suggested that AARP already has a direct line to those individuals in the form of its copious mailings.
“You know how many people turn 50 every year because you’re sending letters out to everybody,” Roberts said.
Roberts wondered if the organization could use its mailing lists to recruit for the workforce.
“You are recruiting all of the time for people to join your organization. Is there an arm of the organization, or can there be some interest generated, that will help the seniors who have retired but want to stay engaged, at least part time, to be grandfathered back into these systems?” Roberts asked. “We have shortages everywhere, but the idea is they have retired. So work things out so they can help be engaged to the extent that they’re able to and interested to.”
Marks said the task force’s plan includes retirees, and also seeks to improve training by creating a Direct Care Training Pathway that can be implemented in state community and technical colleges, and even in high schools.
“We actually had a representative from the state Department of Education because it’s possible that these trainings could be held in high schools, for older high school students, high school seniors,” Marks said. “So rather than maybe go work at Target they could be an in-home caregiver. We would want to use all appropriate places to implement this kind of training surge.”
The improved training program also would allow for easier transitions when workers want to move from in-home care to a facility.
“The training that you received with the home care agency may not translate or be accepted at that facility or vice versa. We want to put together a comprehensive training program that will figure out what training you need,” Marks said.
Marks said the task force also recommends creating incentives so that direct-care workers can improve their training and attain higher-paying positions in the field.
“One of these study projects would provide a little bit of wage reimbursement so you could leave your current position and go take this training and then secure a higher-paying position,” Marks said.
The task force also recommended supporting and incentivizing family caregivers who decide to continue the work once their family role is complete.
Marks said there is no fiscal note attached to the recommendations. She said it may be possible to use unallocated grant money from the American Rescue Plan Act to fund the initiatives.
“We designed them so we could make them bigger or smaller, depending on funding,” she said.
