RELEASE: March 23, 2005

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Davy launches “Rewarding Work” website “live” as FREE employment tool for recruiting direct support workers

Human Services Commissioner James M. Davy and Director of the Division of Disability Services, William A. B. Ditto today launched the Rewarding Work program which enables provider agencies to recruit home health aides and direct care workers for people with disabilities through a new website and hotline… FREE for this year.

“For years we have had difficulty finding direct support workers for programs that serve people with disabilities,” said Davy. “Rewarding Work will be a great help. Its theme - ‘Some people are lucky enough to love their work' - stresses how noble this work is.”

The Rewarding Work program, which was initiated in Massachusetts , is funded in New Jersey through a year-long grant from Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). The program helps Medicaid-approved and/or State-contracted provider agencies of all types (Mental Health, Developmentally Disabled, and Home Health Care) to recruit direct care workers via a special website created for New Jersey – www.rewardingwork.org/nj , plus a toll-free number: 1-888-444-1616 (voice or TTY). It also helps employees find agencies who need to hire workers.

The founders of the program - also running in Massachusetts and Connecticut - Elenore Parker, Donald G. James, & Jeffrey A. Keilson of Rewarding Work Resources, Inc ., Dedham , Massachusetts , demonstrated the website “live.” They showed how the “backside” of the website and its extensive employee database helps agencies hire workers and explained the promotional campaign for the website and toll-free number.

Visiting Nurse Association of Central Jersey 's (VNACJ) Home Health Aide of the Year , Tomika Burrus of Asbury Park , who is one of the workers profiled on the new website, told the audience how her husband even cooks meals for her clients and fixes things around their home. “You become like a family member, especially if you're seeing them [the clients] year after year. When I care for a patient, I think to myself, ‘That could be me, or my mother.' I just love my work.”

Judy Ralph of Hamilton, a 20 year employee of The Arc of Hunterdon County honored numerous times for her devotion to her clients, told the crowd how her therapy dog Zoey calms her clients and helps open them up to new possibilities. “The clients… captured my heart and would not let me go. They bring great joy to my life. A number of them are my friends. And some of them have become my family—which is why I'm still here, long after the first year was over.” The Arc's Executive Director Gail Larkin wrote in the website profile about Ralph, “Judy is an exemplary employee with a heart of gold. Her total commitment and dedication to the people we serve sets the benchmark for all of us to reach.”

Also profiled on the Rewarding Work website, Diana Truppa of Toms River , Ocean County , enthusiastically demonstrated how good she felt whenever her clients accomplished something, thanks to her guidance or teaching. Not only is she Residential Assistant Supervisor for CPC's Behavioral Healthcare's Ault Women's DDD Group Home, Valley House, she is a credentialed Special Olympics coach who actively trains CPC's clients in the sports of cycling and track and field.

Agency providers who are Medicaid-qualified and/or State-contracted, and workers who looking for positions, may find out about Rewarding Work by accessing the new website: www.rewardingwork.org/nj . Workers can apply online or by toll-free phone.

Members of the state's provider agency community that have signed up for the free website service, as well as Department of Labor and Workforce Development (LWD) and Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS) representatives, attended the launch. Invitees included Bing Blanchford, of Workforce NJ and One-Stop Programs and Services, LWD; Diane Conway of NJ Association of Community Providers [for consumers with developmental disabilities]; Carol Kientz of Home Care Association of New Jersey [for home health care clients]; Dr. Debra J. Wentz of the NJ Association of Mental Health Agencies (NJAMHA); and Jean Alan Bestafka of Home Health Services and Staffing Association [for consumers with mental health issues].

The Rewarding Work Program

•  The Rewarding Work Program was started in 1999 to address the recruiting needs of independent provider agencies in the greater Boston metropolitan area.

•  Providers were surveyed, and it was found that agencies were suffering from shortages of workers and too much employee turnover . The agencies were willing to try new techniques to recruit workers, so they held focus groups at the provider agencies to determine people's motivation for becoming direct support workers.

•  The focus groups showed that many people who work in the direct support field had transferred from other careers, as diverse as computer programming and cab drivers.

•  They also found that direct support workers were truly appreciated by the persons they worked for, and that this was the first time that these workers found their work so rewarding.

  •  From this, a theme of “Some people are lucky enough to love their work” was developed and refined into the rewarding work concept, where direct support work was promoted as a rewarding and satisfying career, instead of just an occupation.

•  On the operational side, a two-pronged approach was created, using a combination of a toll-free number and a recruitment website. Workers can fill-in their job applications over the website or toll-free number and find appropriate agencies near to them.

•  Agencies who sign up for access to the website can find workers who have applied to work in their areas.

•  The program was funded by a combination of fees from providers ($40,000) and funding from the Massachusetts Department of Mental Retardation ($60,000). During the first year, over 2,000 responses were received by the program, resulting in 120 new hires.

•  In 2000, the campaign was expanded to the rest of Massachusetts and has proven very successful. For example, in the first year following the expansion, 5,000 persons requested information about becoming a direct support professional and of those, 200 were hired by Massachusetts provider agencies.

•  The program has since been expanded to Connecticut and now New Jersey .

•  In New Jersey the program is currently available for Medicaid approved and/or State-contracted provider agencies.

Frequently Asked Questions:

Q: How is the program funded in New Jersey ?

A: It is funded by a grant called The Real Choice Systems Change Grant from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which is meant to improve delivery of services for persons with disabilities. The grant allocation for this project is for $130,000, to run through December of 2005.

Grant monies will go toward creating and implementing a New Jersey-specific website, plus direct mail and print advertising campaign promoting the website and toll-free number for accessing Rewarding Work, either as an employee or as an agency.

Q: How severe is the Worker Shortage in the Home Health Care Agencies in New Jersey ?

A: Exact numbers are hard to come by. But every provider that DDS has spoken to talks about the same basic issues: recruitment and retention, saying that “It's hard to find workers and harder to keep them.”

The Rewarding Work Program addresses these questions in two ways:

•  It provides employers with a database of people who have expressed an interest in working in the industry here in New Jersey ; and

•  It presents a positive picture of why one should choose this type of work as a career. Using the past experience in Massachusetts as a guide, this approach will help to draw a new supply of workers into the industry.

Q: How long will the State fund the program?

A: Due to grant funding limitations, funding will end at the end of this year.

Q: How will it be funded after that?

A: Through a steering committee of providers, the Division of Disability Services, and Rewarding Work Resources, Inc., we are discussing ways to determine future funding mechanisms.

Website: www.rewardingwork.org/nj

Toll-free number: 888-444-1616 (voice or TTY)

Rewarding Work Resources, Inc © Copyright 2005

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