Turning Community Elder Care into a Profession: Insights from Trainees, Developers, Employers and Supervisors

This study explores the process of turning elder care into a profession, by giving a voice to different professionals who took part in developing and implementing a new Israeli training program for community care workers. The program attempts to offer a response to the shortage of paid long-term carers for older adults by turning community elder care into a profession. Interviews with graduates, trainees who dropped out of the program, developers, employers and supervisors from three regions of the training program were conducted. Analysis explored attempts to transition community care from an occupation to a profession. The community care worker’s role and its uniqueness in comparison to the traditional paid long-term care worker are discussed. The difficulties that stem from the ambiguity of the definition of this new occupation are described.