• Futuro Health Joins CA Dept of Aging: Free Training and Bonuses Offered to Caregivers
• Our Latest Blog: The Healthcare Workforce Crisis. Are Students Drowning in Debt or Is the Industry Under-Selling Its Jobs?
• Futuro Health Scholar Spotlight: Medical Assistant Program Scholar Cassandra B.
• Congratulations Graduates!
• Meet our Futuro Health Success Coaches
• Futuro Health in the News
• WorkforceRx Podcast: Sameer Gadkaree, President & CEO of The Institute for College Access and Success: Creating Paths To Debt-Free College

The California Department of Aging has launched a new CalGrows initiative to support in-home and community-based caregivers of older adults and people with disabilities. Through this program, paid direct care workers and unpaid family and friend caregivers in California can enhance their skills through training, incentives and outline a career path for the future.

 As one of the training providers chosen to support CalGrows, Futuro Health is offering 10 free quality online training courses in both English and Spanish. Courses cover a variety of topics, including end-of-life care, grief, managing stress, dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, communication skills and English language learning.

While developing skills and growing their careers, eligible paid direct care workers can earn up to $2,500 for completing CalGrows Learn and Earn training courses. Caregivers can earn $30 per hour for each Learn and Earn class completed over the next three months, and receive a one-time $500 bonus when they complete 15 hours of eligible courses. The incentives are paid by CalGrows once a caregiver has submitted a claim to CalGrows, including the required information.

Futuro Health is proud to provide this training for paid and unpaid caregivers and support those who are providing care to aging seniors across California. To learn more about this program, visit https://futurohealth.org/calgrows/. 

Education and training are requisites in the highly credentialed field of care.  Nowadays, however, it is difficult to avoid news surrounding the burden of student debt and the long-term consequences it imposes on borrowers. With punitive interest rates reaching as high as 15% annually, it’s not uncommon to hear stories of students who graduated with five-figure student loans, which can put things like homeownership and a better life out of reach. I recently reviewed student debt data for California and was shocked by the increase to an average of $37,084 student debt in 2022, up sharply from $21,125 during the 2019-20 pre-pandemic years. Curious about the broader picture, I researched national student debt figures, only to verify that California is not an anomaly, with the average student debt across all 50 states being comparable during this same time. 

Cassandra was a preschool and kindergarten teacher for nearly eight years, and often found herself struggling to raise her son on a modest salary. When COVID hit, Cassandra decided to take a leap of faith and switch careers. “My older cousin referred me to Futuro Health after learning I wanted to pursue a career in the medical field. When I found out about Futuro Health’s scholarship and that all my training would be paid for, I cried.”

Futuro Health supports our Scholars by forging partnerships with an ecosystem of education providers (public and non- public) to simplify the education journey for adult learners. Recently, Campus (formerly MTI College) hosted their annual Commencement at the Crest Theatre in Sacramento.

Representing Futuro Health at the ceremony were John Cordova, Director of Workforce Development and Clinical Partnerships, and Jin Kim Senior Manager of Education Providers. More than half of the 230 Campus grads were Futuro Health Scholars. We congratulate our Scholars on this milestone and graduating debt-free as they embark on their exciting new careers in healthcare.

WorkforceRx Podcast

About Futuro Health 

Futuro Health is a non-profit organization focused on improving the health and wealth of communities by growing the largest network of healthcare workers in the nation.

Futuro Health makes education journeys into allied health careers possible by growing the talent that employers need and creating a path to opportunity that workers want.