TANF Recipients as Potential Long-Term Care Workers: An Assessment of the Prospects in the District of Columbia, Illinois, Maryland and South Carolina

The LTC industry's need for workers and TANF recipients' need for jobs could be mutually beneficial if, indeed, recipients' characteristics, skills, and circumstances match the requirements, accessibility, and availability of LTC jobs. In this paper, the authors provide a brief overview of what is already known about the characteristics of long-term care jobs and the individuals who hold them, focusing on nurse aides and home health aides. They use survey data from the District of Columbia and three states (Illinois, Maryland and South Carolina) to examine the characteristics and circumstances of all single-parent TANF case heads, and of those recipients who are or have recently been employed in the long-term care industry. Finally, the authors use multivariate analysis to predict the likelihood of employment among current TANF recipients and use the results to estimate the proportion of the current TANF caseload that could potentially be employed in the long-term care industry and describe their characteristics. They conclude this paper with a brief discussion of the potential policy and/or program initiatives that this analysis suggests. [82 PDF pages]