Personal and Home Care Aide State Training Program (PHCAST)

North Carolina was one of six states chosen as a grantee to develop a Personal and Home Care Aide State Training Program (PHCAST) for direct care workers in long term care settings. The proposal was led by the NC Department of Health and Human Services and will be managed in collaboration with the NC Foundation for Advanced Health Programs.  Institute on Aging investigators Drs. Jennifer Craft Morgan and Thomas R. Konrad will lead the evaluation team.

The state has assembled a broad-based partner team of stakeholders to implement the PHCAST program.  The partners will develop, pilot test, implement, and evaluate a four-phase comprehensive training and competency development program for direct care workers in long term care settings over a three year period.

The Institute on Aging, with the leadership of Drs. Morgan and Konrad, will assess impacts of training on trainees’ knowledge, competencies, supervisor-rated performance, and quality of care. Additionally, the IOA will identify implementation barriers and system changes required for sustainability Dr. Morgan, Principal Investigator of the IOA’s portion of the grant.

The PHCAST Project was created as part of the Affordable Care Act. It is a three-year demonstration program to develop core competencies, pilot training curricula, and establish certification programs for personal and home care aides.A total of $4.2 million was awarded to California, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, and North Carolina. The six states that are participating in the three-year PHCAST Program are expected to train over 5,100 personal home care aides by 2013.

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