Hospitals aren’t the only health care facilities grappling with staff shortages. Nursing homes across the nation, including here in Florida, are facing an acute shortage of nurses and nurses’ aides.
The number of Floridians testing to become a certified nursing assistant (CNA) has declined by 50% over the past decade, the Florida Health Care Association (FHCA) says — and the COVID-19 pandemic decimated the ranks of the sector’s workforce, which dropped to its lowest levels since 1994. To cope with the shortfall, nine out of 10 nursing centers surveyed by the FHCA say they’ve been asking staff to work overtime or pick up extra shifts, and nearly half have been turning to temporary staffing agencies to meet their needs.
Barb Clapp, the CEO of Dwyer Workforce Development, a Baltimore-based nonprofit, is working on another solution. The nonprofit, which recently expanded into Florida, helps to recruit unemployed and under-employed individuals to work as nursing assistants. Those who are selected to be “Dwyer Scholars” receive free training along with other support and assistance.
The process starts with a candidate screening by Dwyer’s call center. During that call, Clapp says, a “barrier assessment” is completed. The first consideration is whether health care is a good fit for the candidate. Another consideration is whether the individual can afford to go to work — or whether it will push them over what’s known as a benefits cliff, a phenomenon that can occur when a small bump in income makes people ineligible for public assistance they had been receiving. “We do an analysis of what they lose and gain by going to work,” Clapp explains.
Those who enter the program are paired with a case manager who helps make sure they have everything they need — from childcare to housing to food to transportation — to succeed in their new career. “We have scholars who come to us living in their cars. They’re really in dire straits,” Clapp says.
Dwyer Workforce Development launched in Florida in 2023 via a partnership with CareerSource Brevard. Since then, it’s expanded its services to Polk County through a partnership with CareerSource Polk and Astoria Senior Living, and it’s expanding into Central and Southwest Florida via partnerships with local workforce development boards and other regional groups. In May, Dwyer — in partnership with CareerEdge Funders Collaborative, the Greater Sarasota Chamber of Commerce and Suncoast Technical College — celebrated the graduation of the program’s first cohort of 11 CNAs who completed a tuition-free CNA FastTrack program at Suncoast Technical College. Dwyer also is expanding its services to other counties.
Last year, Clapp says, the organization trained 2,200 CNAs across the U.S., and this year it will train more than 3,750 CNAs, including more than 800 in Florida. And while the national retention rate for a CNA is a meager 14%, Dwyer graduates are sticking with the program. Dwyer boasts of an 81% completion rate and an 86% employment placement rate. After a graduate has spent nine months on the job as a CNA, she says, a career counselor will reach out to them to talk about upskilling their credentials to become a medical technologist, or even an LPN or RN.
“We’re keeping people employed, and they’re moving on to the next step,” Clapp says.