National Dissemination of the Aging and Communications Training (ACT) Project

The ACT project was designed to enhance the professionalism of direct care employees and volunteers; enabling them to better serve independent-living older adults across an array of ages, cultures, mental capacities, and socioeconomic levels. This project was planned and implemented by the SPRY Foundation, in partnership with Baltimore City's Commission on Aging and Retirement Education (CARE) and the National Association of Area Agencies on Aging (n4A), with Retirement Research Foundation funding. Building on key community informant interviews and stakeholder focus groups, and on current literature on aging, the training curriculum was developed with particular focus on skills for communicating with older adults and stress management. After a field test with three types of direct care workers in Baltimore, thirteen master trainers from around the country were selected and trained in the curriculum at the national n4A meeting in July, 2007. They then returned to their jurisdictions and were asked to train at least twenty more trainers in their states, in hopes that the curriculum would be widely used. It was remarkable that the group achieved 88% of their goal by the end of the grant-funded data collection in January, 2008, and have continued the training beyond that point. The results of the trainer-training process will be discussed, along with the potential for future distribution of this approach beyond the “borders” of Area Agencies on Aging and/or public organizations