Anyone Care? Leading the Paradigm Shift in Developing Arizona’s Direct Care Workforce Recommendations from the Citizens Workgroup on the Long-Term Care Workforce

question we all must answer. The future portends exponential growth in the aging and disabled population in Arizona; of this there is little doubt or disagreement. Considering the fact that, even today, we face a crisis in the long-term care workforce—it is abundantly clear that we must build a new paradigm to create a stable and capable work force sufficient to meet the dramatic surge in the projected demographics of care in Arizona. Governor Janet Napolitano embraced this challenge, issuing an Executive Order, called Aging 2020, in March 2004 to all state departments requiring them to plan for the significant increase in Arizona’s aging population by the year 2020. At that time she also created the Citizens Work Group on the Long-Term Care Workforce, empowering knowledgeable citizen leaders in the aging and disability networks to further study the issue of the direct care workforce. This report is an interim analysis following eight months of deliberation on key areas impacting the viability of the direct care workforce. In this report you will find summarized some of the best thinking on the future of the long-term care (LTC) workforce, projections on where Arizona ma