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Home Service Training/Video
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Consultation and Training for Home Services Agencies

The independent living philosophy, with its emphasis on consumer choice and control, helped build the foundation of a slow but developing movement to increase consumer direction in a widening array of allied health services, including long term care.

Home and community based services are a growing need, expected to increase exponentially as "baby boomers" age. While a significant number of government funded home service programs allow consumers to recruit and hire any worker they choose, many home care services will continue to be delivered by agencies. One way to enhance consumer direction in long term care is to build knowledge and capacity for consumer direction within the home service agencies.

With support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Progress Center for Independent Living has developed a process through which consumer direction and the independent living philosophy can be incorporated into agency delivered home care services. Using the tools developed through the project, a local consumer controlled center for independent living can provide one or more of three methods of consultation and training.

  1. Organizational Assessment
  2. Staff training and
  3. Consumer training.
A Training Manual, Incorporating Independent Living Philosophy into Home Services Agencies, and ten-minute video, Personal Assistance: A Choice for Independence, are designed to be used by centers for independent living, home services agencies, organizations serving older and/or disabled people, and a variety of trainers and educators. More specifically, organizations which may find these tools helpful are:

  • centers for independent living that want to offer training and/or consultation services to home service agencies
  • home service agencies (home health, homemaker, personal care, nursing agencies) that want to obtain consultation or training from an independent living center, or undertake other steps to enhance consumer direction in their service delivery approaches
  • home care trainers, whether based in an agency, hospital, community college, senior center, area agency on aging, or other educational setting.
The primary purpose of these tools is to support the development of consumer directed approaches in agency-based in-home services. They are designed to encourage and foster training, networking and collaboration between consumer-directed centers for independent living and home services agencies, especially providers serving aging consumers. Included are sections which can be used as a "how to" guide for carrying out one or more of the project methods of enhancing consumer direction, i.e. organizational assessment, staff training and consumer training.

To obtain a copy of the Training Manual and video, Personal Assistance: A Choice for Independence, please place your order by mailing a check for $25 to Progress Center for Independent Living, 7521 Madison Street, Forest Park, IL 60130, stating that it is for the "Home Services Agency Training Manual and Video" and providing a shipping address.

Home services agencies located in the Chicago area may also request consultation and training services from Progress Center by calling Diane Coleman at (708) 209-1500 or e-mailing at dcoleman@progresscil.org.

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