The Paraprofessional in Home Health and Long-Term Care Training Modules for Working with Older Adults By Ellen Cervantes, M.S.W., Jeanne Heid-Grubman, L.S.W., & Charlotte K. Schuerman, L.C.S.W

Excerpted from the Preface and Instructor’s Guide for The Paraprofessional in Home Health and Long-Term Care: Training Modules for Working with Older Adults, by Ellen Cervantes, Jeanne Heid-Grubman, and Charlotte K. Schuerman.

Copyright © 1995 by Health Professions Press, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Preface

As the population grows older and more frail, the need for professional caregivers in home health and long-term care also grows.  Caregivers serve older people in many capacities, as companion, personal shopper, chef, and homemaker, in a variety of workplaces, such as continuing care communities, nursing homes, and residences.  Although the field has developed in tandem with the advances made in aging, gerontology, and the quality of life of older people, little or no specialized training has been made available to care providers.  To compensate, many paraprofessionals have extrapolated experience from a related field or have relied on their caring instincts.  However, the advances in the field of aging have made it difficult for care providers to rely solely on instinct or experience for guidance in their work.  This book has been written in an attempt to supplement these methods by providing an in-service manual for trainers of care workers in the field of aging. 

In developing training materials suitable for the paraprofessional working with older people, the authors have found that experimental education works best for adult learners and have employed the techniques of experimental education in writing this book. This type of education joins what the learner knows from experience to the didactic content of classroom information.  The authors designed 11 modules that cover the situations most often faced by health care providers in their work, such as dealing with older adults with dementia, alcoholism, and depression; how to better communicate with older people; what a caregiver should do when she observes mental or physical abuse in the home of the older client or when an older person exhibits inappropriate behavior; how to handle a client who is abusing medication; relaxation techniques that the caregiver can use to relieve her own stress; and ways to cope with stressful circumstances or people.  Each module contains numerous activities that provide an opportunity to adult learners to cooperate, to role play, to build self-esteem, and to think more deeply about their work, something that is not always available during a busy workday.  Trainers also may wish to create activities specific to the interests of their group of adult learners; the list of resources at the back of the book may provide guidance in the development of these activities.  An instructor’s guide is supplied prior to the Introduction to assist trainers in using this book and setting up in-service sessions. 

Instructor’s Guide

This manual can be used for teaching caregivers in both community-based and residential long-term care facilities.  The training modules appear in a recommended training progression; however, they can be used in any order.  Each module is designed to be used by itself for a 90-minute-long training session.  The teaching goal and objectives for the module are identified on the first page, followed by a glossary of key terms introduced in the module.  Experiential activities are integrated into the text.  Handout materials (“Training Materials”) that are ready for photo-duplication can be found at the back of the book, along with resources and further reading for the instructor. Permission from the publisher to use these materials for in-service workshops is not necessary.  (You may want to make a master copy of each handout and store the masters in a folder.  The handouts also may be used as an overhead projection.)

In order to make the training directly relevant to your group, add discussion time so that concerns and ideas of the learners can be addressed.  Experiment with the activities included (marked with a starburst symbol) to bring the points home to your staff while facilitating their integration of new ideas. 

Because most people receiving care and most of their care providers are women, we have chosen to use feminine pronouns in most cases.  In community-based care the caregiver may be referred to as the homemaker, home care worker, home care aide, or the home health aide.  In a nursing home the caregiver is generally called the nursing assistant or the nursing aide.  We have chosen to refer to the person providing care as the “care provider” or “caregiver,” a general term that is applicable to any of these job titles.