When the COVID-19 pandemic severely exacerbated the shortage of long-term care workers, a number of operatives in Colorado took notice and began developing a strategy to try to solve the problem. This effort continues today and has recently been joined by AgeWise Colorado. Project participants include personnel at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs (UCCS), long-term care consultant Penny Whitney, the nonprofit Innovations in Aging, the Pikes Peak Workforce Center, and other entities. The strategy is dubbed “Jumpstart the Aging Workforce Solutions,” or JAWS. It is pursuing its mission in El Paso County, Colorado’s most populous county. When seven long-term care facilities in the state shut down in the wake of COVID, four of them were in El Paso County. But as Whitney put it, “This is a game we’re all in. It’s not just our community’s issue, it’s a state issue, it’s a national issue. A lot of people talk about it. But the important thing is UCCS and El Paso County are doing something about it.”
Research statistics indicate that by year 2030, the caregiver shortage may reach 115,000 in Colorado, at which time the state’s 65+ population will have climbed to 1.2 million. The growth in numbers of older adults will be greatest in the 80-89 and 90+ cohorts, ages in which the need for long-term care is also greatest. In El Paso County alone, there will be some 135,000 people over age 65 by 2030, about 11% of the statewide total of 65+ adults. This would translate to a caregiver shortage of roughly 13,000 in El Paso County six years from now. It is generally estimated that 50 to 70% of people age 65+ will need long-term care. So the crunch in the caregiver workforce is plain to see.
JAWS Reaches Out to Colorado Students
Over the almost two years since it began, JAWS has gathered extensive input, especially from long-term care and service providers and educators. One aim is to create a “recruiting pipeline” that can expose high school and university students to long-term care as promising career choices. To this end, JAWS has created interactive tours as a teaching strategy to educate students on the aging process and the type of healthcare needed for it. Students get the chance to hear firsthand about nursing programs by speaking with nursing students and learning what they need to do to get into the field. These efforts introduce high school Career and Technical Education (CTE) and college students to the importance of long-term care, the diverse career opportunities it offers, and what it means to be a part of that LTC workforce. JAWS has arranged for specialized training that covers subjects such as patient experiences in long-term care, memory care and dementia, and what long-term care leadership entails. JAWS has also established partnerships with long-term care entities in the community to offer working internships. As of summer 2024, JAWS reported that internships were on track to reach a goal of 150 student interns.
Whitney said she has been particularly impressed with the interest and motivation expressed by students. She says it belies the common perception that younger people are not attracted to a field like long-term care or don’t have the temperament for it. Many students expressed personal reasons for their interest, such as having a family member with a disability or a family member who is already working in long-term care. Others were curious to know more about long-term care as a career pursuit, or they already felt it might be a good fit for them.
Colorado Students React to What They learn about Long-Term Care
After engaging with JAWS programs, students also voiced observations such as these:
- I changed my mind about seniors as sad, withdrawn, and quiet. A long-term care facility can be full of kindness and laughter.
- It is really nice to hear the stories of elders. There is satisfaction in knowing the residents like to have someone to talk to and share their stories. To learn from other generations. Listening is important to let others unload their wisdom.
- All healthcare is connected.
- I learned patience. Also how to move out of my comfort zone.
- I was impressed by the pride LTC team members have in the work they do, their energy, their social skills, their empathy and compassion.
And they also found new perceptions of long-term care, saying things like:
- LTC is a home.
- LTC is giving people a family.
- LTC is a place to thrive surrounded by people who care for you.
- LTC is about maintaining quality of life regardless of physical or mental condition.
- LTC is about professionalism, about teamwork, and about coordination where the residents come first.
AgeWise Colorado Joins with JAWS to Explore Bringing Older Caregivers into the Workforce
A joint initiative between JAWS and AgeWise Colorado (AWC) is now also adding a focus on the other end of the age spectrum: That is, how to bring older adults into the long-term care workforce. A proposed three-year project named “JAWS-2” hopes to leverage the community connections and learning from the existing JAWS-1 project with an emphasis on recruiting, hiring, and training direct care workers age 50 and older.
The project proposal calls this a “natural next step” to supplement the outreach to student populations in filling the long-term care workforce gap — a way to “reach out to other sources of employees to fill more vacancies NOW.” Personnel at JAWS and AWC note that the difficulties of finding a job for people aged 50+ are well known. They say, “Many older people need and/or want to work and many, like the younger people, have never given thought to entering the LTC workforce.” They add that employers may need to make accommodations for some of them, such as adapting to their strengths, needs, and productive capacities, but the potential is there. AWC pledges to provide its years of experience in business, the field of aging, and education, and in the El Paso County community to develop and guide this project.
AWC goes on to say that bringing older adults into the long-term care workforce can also support the ability for them to age in place — a primary focus of AWC since its inception three years ago. “We are not aware of any projects, anywhere, with similar objectives and focus,” AWC says. “The current JAWS-1 program itself is both innovative and unique in its focus on the young and future workers in the broad LTC continuum of in-home care to nursing homes. This [JAWS-2] project expands upon that concept to create a new pool of LTC workers with decades of life experience, who in many cases are overlooked by employers.”
The JAWS-2 project anticipates beginning with creation of a Design and Implementation Team that builds on the existing JAWS-1 team consisting of in-home care provider businesses, local community leaders, UCCS, local financial contributors, potential 50+ direct care workers, and marginalized community representatives — all while including and expanding the benefits of AgeWise Colorado to the community at large. Plans would then include understanding how to meet the 50+ workers where they are to attract them to this field of work, including specifics such as pay expectations, work hour limitations and flexibility, benefits, and transportation needs. JAWS-2 would also determine if and how in-home care providers can meet project expectations, noting some will be more amenable than others. Finally, job descriptions would be written, recruiting undertaken, and a small cohort of older care workers would be hired and trained. Their performance would be monitored, and problems identified, to learn what works or doesn’t work. If successful, JAWS-2 is seen as potentially designing a “Direct Care Worker for LTC Roadmap” for use in any community.
Colorado Faces an Ongoing Workforce Challenge
Looking back to the pandemic that was instrumental in triggering JAWS efforts, Whitney commented: “COVID is not gone. It’s still taking various forms, and it and the exhaustion of the staff all goes back into a circle. If you’ve got an exhausted staff, you’re not going to have quality care. If you don’t have a quality care environment, it’s not the kind of place that’s going to enthusiastically be attractive to the interns and students. So all of those pieces have to be in places to really address the workforce issue. That’s the goal of JAWS.”
The JAWS-2 proposals echoes that observation, stating: “The shortage of LTC workers is only growing. Innovative approaches are required to ensure that our older adults who need help with the activities of daily living, and more, are valued and can thrive and contribute their experience to the community at large. The long-term sustainability of the entire, vital, LTC industry is really at stake. Its success and longevity is totally dependent on a supply of trained and dedicated workers.”
