New College Program Provides Vital Training for Home Care Aides

Considering a recent analysis of training for personal care aides working in publicly-funded home care programs that found standards were inconsistent or in many states nonexistent, the topic of a new program at the College of Southern Nevada is extremely timely: Home Care Aide Training.  

Home health care is one of the fastest-growing businesses throughout the United States, reports the Las Vegas Review-Journal, and Dan Gouker, CSN’s executive director for the Division of Workforce, Economic Development, and Apprenticeship Studies, is overseeing a program that’s filling the need to providing staffing for this profession.

Training standards for personal care aides employed through Medicaid-funded programs vary vastly from state to state, found recent analysis from the Paraprofessional Healthcare Institute. 

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The CSN course is designed to prepare students for jobs as home care aides, whether for seniors or those with disabilities, and was developed by the Department of Labor with federal funding. 

 “The program is brand new,” Gouker told the Review-Journal. “We started with just two students in January, and this semester we have 11 students. It’s an intensive five-week program with students in class Monday through Thursday from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. That equals out to 120 hours of classroom lectures and lab time.”

Students will graduate with a National Career Readiness Certificate and National Home Care Credentials. 

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Already, two of the program’s graduates have been hired by a Nevada home care agency.

“When the program got under way, I reviewed the syllabus, met the first two students and spoke with several of the professors,” Steve Gleicher, owner and operations director for Right at Home, says in the article. “The growth prospect for health care aides is huge and the task before us is getting trained, qualified and responsible people to work in this industry. The CSN program is positioning itself to provide these individuals and grow with us.”

Read more at the Las Vegas Review-Journal. 

Written by Alyssa Gerace