White Paper: Building Capacity and Coordinating Support for Family Caregivers and the Direct Service Workforce
National Direct Service Workforce Resource Center, Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services
Common goals and policy recommendations emerging from the CMS Leadership Summit on the direct service workforce and family caregivers. The CMS Leadership Summit was held September 16-17, 2010.
Executive Summary:
In the world of long-term services and supports policies and programs, caregiving tends to be thought of as a dichotomy of family care vs. paid care i, with little coordination across programs and public policies affecting family caregivers and professional (paid) caregivers. However, both family caregivers and paid caregivers are vital to ensuring access to quality services and supports for people of all ages with disability/illness, and both groups experience similar rewards as well as challenges.
To explore potential options and benefits of a more coordinated approach, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) convened the Leadership Summit on Building Capacity and Coordinating Support for Family Caregivers and the Direct Service Workforce in September 2010. The event brought together leaders in the field of caregiving to identify areas of policy intersections and develop recommendations for action for working together to address crosscutting issues. Invited participants included national leaders in the fields of family caregiving, direct service workforce development, policy makers, consumers of long-term services and supports, caregivers, workers, and advocates. A focus group/think tank model was used to help participants make connections, find commonalities and differences, and establish a set of agreed upon goals. This white paper presents the common goals and policy recommendations emerging from the Summit discussions.
From these discussions, consensus emerged that a high degree of commonality exists across caregivers in terms of their contribution to and significance in the lives of people with disabilities and their needs. Furthermore, discussions showed that the needs and interests of caregivers cannot fully be separated from the needs and interests of the people they support. To the extent that public policies support the interests of people with disabilities, caregivers benefit, and to the extent that caregivers are supported, people with disabilities benefit.
The leaders in attendance at the Summit ultimately articulated 12 common goals, each with specific policy recommendations. These are presented here in two general categories: 1) common goals for broad systems change that would improve the entire system of long-term services and supports, and thus benefit family caregivers and the direct service workforce, and 2) common goals that are more specific to family caregiver and workforce policy. Across these areas, diverse participants agreed that taking more coordinated action in these areas would improve conditions for all caregivers and people with disabilities.
Visit the Direct Service Workforce (DSW) Core Competency Project from Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) for the final Competency Set and the DSW Core Competencies Companion Guide.
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