A durable forum for the direct care workforce

The direct care workforce -- the aides, attendants, technicians, and caregivers who deliver hands-on support in homes, adult day centers, residential programs, and community settings -- is the foundation upon which the nation’s systems of aging, disability, and community care rest. It is also a workforce under sustained strain: recruitment is difficult, retention is fragile, training is uneven across jurisdictions, and the policy environment that governs it is fragmented across federal agencies and fifty states.

The Council was founded on a simple premise: that the people closest to this workforce -- the operators who staff programs, the clinicians who train and supervise, the researchers who study caregiving systems, and the advocates who navigate its policy environment -- should have a common table at which to examine the evidence and advise on the path forward.

We are deliberately small. We are grounded in real-world care delivery. And we measure our work by a single standard: whether it improves the conditions under which direct care is given and received.