Newly hired home-care workers must undergo tougher background checks starting today under terms of Initiative 1163, which voters overwhelmingly approved in November.
A longer, 75-hour training course mandated by the new law takes effect Saturday.
The Department of Social and Health Services is not expecting a huge influx of applicants seeking the extra training at the start of the year. That is because most of the state’s more than 40,000 home-care workers who serve Medicaid clients already were trained under the old 35-hour standard and are exempt from the new rules, officials said.
“I think it would be in the low hundreds. It would just be new workers,’’ said Barbara Hanneman, the quality-assurance manager for home- and community-care programs at the Department of Social and Health Services.
Hanneman said the agency approved a new administrative code Friday that puts the requirements of I-1163 into law for home-care workers. The workers typically help lifting and bathing clients, as well as cooking, cleaning, shopping and doing other household chores that enable them to live independently.
Under I-1163, care workers also must pass competency tests to be certified by the state Department of Health. Agency spokesmen familiar with the new certification could not be reached to comment Friday.
Also new: a national background check for new hires.
Washington long has done state-level background checks for long-term-care workers it oversees, and it has checked workers’ names against abuse registries. DSHS also has done fingerprint and FBI criminal-history checks for paid caregivers who have lived in the state for less than three consecutive years.
Training requirements under I-1163 increase from about 34 hours for new home-care workers. The law similarly boosts the refresher training minimum to 12 hours a year, up from 10. And it changes training requirements for paid providers who care for their own elderly or disabled adult children, as well as aides working in adult family homes.
The Service Employees International Union Healthcare 775 NW sponsored I-1163. The new law is expected to cost the state about $18 million over the next year and a half, including payment of training costs and time for home-care workers who provide care under the Medicaid program for low-income and disabled people.
The state has a $1.5 billion budget gap to close in January, and tax increases likely will be part of the budget solutions. So far, lawmakers have shown little interest in trying to muster a two-thirds vote to suspend or delay the higher home-care standards – which they did in 2009 and 2011 after voters approved a previous home-care training measure.
Any caregiver hired after Jan. 7 to provide care to a Medicaid client must obtain the more in-depth training. The training is free to the workers through The Training Partnership, a nonprofit with links to SEIU Healthcare 775 NW.
Hanneman of DSHS said those hired before Jan. 7 have 120 days in which to obtain the training required under current law.
Brad Shannon: 360-753-1688 bshannon@theolympian.com www.theolympian.com/politicsblog
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