Training for personal care home administrators has taken a new approach. The Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare has tightened requirements for administrators of personal care (assisted living facilities) and HACC is responding to the new mandates by offering a new 100-hour Personal Care Home Administrator Training program.

"These changes have been necessary for many years and it is good to see this improvement in training come to fruition," said Kathie Zimmerman, RN, director of this program as well as the HACC Nurse Aide Training program. "Previous requirements were outdated and did not adequately address all of the issues surrounding resident care in personal care environments."

According to Zimmerman, the training is not limited to administrators at assisted living facilities, but also for any healthcare professional.

"Our program at HACC is also an opportunity for healthcare professionals who would like to advance to an administrative level," said Zimmerman. "They can pick and choose various components of the course and work toward obtaining this certification at their own rate."

The new training offered by HACC improves staff and administrator skills and performance in many areas including environmental safety, medication administration, service assessment and planning, dementia care, and inspection survey outcomes.

Personal care/assisted living homes are a vital and an ever growing component of the continuum of community-based residential services available to the residents of Pennsylvania.

The PA Department of Public Welfare currently provides Adult Residential Licensing for 1,665 licensed personal care homes in Pennsylvania, serving 52,788 adults.

Residents of these homes include adults who require or want supervision with activities of daily living, as well as residents with dementia-related illnesses, physical and mobility needs, those with mental illness, and those with developmental disability/mental retardation or traumatic brain injury. The residents require assistance from others to meet their basic needs such as meal choices and preparation, eating, ambulation or mobility, personal hygiene, taking medications, laundering clothes and using transportation.

HACC's training will focus on managing these needs of residents as well as enhancing customer skills, successful marketing, understanding and interpreting regulations, human resources issues, increased medical knowledge, financial management and communication.

HACC assembled an extremely qualified group of individuals who will provide this training. Professionals from areas such as fire safety and EMS services, nursing, social work, human resources, nutrition, rehabilitation, law, psychology, mental retardation, gerontology, record keeping and more will use various methods of instruction including many opportunities for discussion.

Linda Dubbs, CNA, of Lebanon currently works in a personal care home and holds previous certification, as well as an associate degree in general studies and a diploma in gerontology from HACC.

She is planning to take HACC's new training with the goal of obtaining a position as a personal care home administrator. She previously ran a unit for 15 years under the supervision of an LPN social services director and administrator of the home, with a staff of six people.

"I think it's a great idea that HACC is taking the initiative to offer this training. HACC is in the early stages of developing a degree program in gerontology, and this is a step toward that," said Dubbs, who plans to study psychological and behavioral healthcare management at Albright College.

HACC offers the new Personal Care Home Administrator Training every 3 months with the next course beginning April 18 and ending June 3. Training courses run two evenings per week, Tuesdays and Thursdays, 6-10 p.m., and Saturdays, 8 a.m.-4:30 p.m. The next series of sessions begin the last week of June and continue to the second week of August. Another series begins in September. All classes are held at HACC's Penn Center, 349 Wiconisco Street, near the corner of Third and Wiconisco Streets in Harrisburg.

Persons may finish training earlier if they are current in their CPR certification. Administrators of personal care/assisted living facilities who were in their current position prior to October 24, 2005, are automatically grandfathered in and are not required to take the full 100 hours of the new administrator training. These existing administrators can take specific sessions of the training thereby meeting the new DPW requirement of 24 hours of yearly Continuing Education Units (CEUs.) for all personal care home administrators.

Cost for the 6-week Personal Care Home Administrator training is $1449 per person. For more information regarding the new 100 hr. course or any portion of the course to be used as CEUs, or to register please contact HACC at (717) 221-1352 or email to Jackie at jafoster@ hacc.edu or Kathie at kfzimmer@hacc.edu.