The Direct Care Alliance (DCA), a nationwide and state-based advocacy organization for direct care workers in long-term care, has recently named Carla D. Washington as its new Executive Director. DCA is an advocate to help direct care workers fight for better wages, benefits, and training, and make this growing field an attractive career.

Ms. Washington arrives at DCA with an impressive resume. She has spent over two-decades working with non-profit social service organizations as a program developer, manager, and director in government, health care and human services. At the Alliance of Children and Families in Milwaukee, her most recent position, she served as director of a program which helped member organizations to strengthen the human services provided to older adults.

“My mother was a direct care work for nearly 30 years,” Washington says. “Partially due to that, I started to do more research on The Direct Care Alliance, and their vision for bringing respect to the field, as well as strengthen the workforce is a big attraction for me.”

She hopes to build and expand the credentialing program during her tenure. “We want to partner with organizations like DirectCourse,” she says, “to augment the credentialing program. I want to build up the skill level of direct care workers, and build more respect for the profession.”

Early in the DirectCourse/College of Personal Assistance and Caregiving (CPAC) curriculum planning, the content partners at the University of California- San Francisco Personal Assistance Services Center (UCSF-PAS Center) addressed the Competencies and Skills required for the Direct Care Alliance credential for direct care workers. As of this writing, the CPAC curriculum is the only home care education program to provide a crosswalk of available content to the Direct Care Alliance credential.

For more information, please visit: http://directcourseonline.com/personalassistance/