There are over forty-four thousand personal care attendants in the workforce providing services to consumers. 2 Since 2008 when the Council was formed, the number of PCA consumers and PCA providers in Massachusetts has more than doubled.
The Massachusetts Personal Care Attendant (PCA) program is a Consumer-directed model, in which the PCA consumer is the employer, and is fully responsible for recruiting, hiring, scheduling, training, and if necessary, firing PCAs. MassHealth funds and administers the PCA program and contracts with fiscal intermediaries and personal care management agencies across the state to perform employer-required tasks on behalf of the consumer, determine consumer eligibility for PCA services, and provide training and resources to consumers to support them in their roles as PCA employers.
The Personal Care Attendant Quality Home Care Workforce Council (“the Council”) consists of nine appointed members (See Appendix A: full list of Council members) and was established within the Executive Office of Health and Human Services (EOHHS) to “…insure the quality of long-term, in home, personal care by recruiting, training and stabilizing the work force of personal care attendants (M.G.L. Chapter 268 of the Acts of 2006).”
