fastest-aging<\/a> metropolitan areas in the country.<\/p>\nArticle continues below this ad<\/p>\n
Skilled nursing and assisted living facilities have been grappling with the shortage for years and experimenting with ways to incentivize more caregivers to enter and stay in the field.Many of those efforts focus on CNAs, as more than half of CNAs in California serve older adults in nursing or community-based settings.<\/p>\n
![\"A]()
<\/p>\n
A note thanking certified nursing assistants hangs inside the San Francisco Campus for Jewish Living in San Francisco.<\/p>\n
Jana A\u0161enbrennerov\u00e1\/For the S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n
\u201cThere aren\u2019t enough people to fill these roles, and high turnover,\u201d said SFCJL CEO Dr. Adrienne Green. Many similar organizations have opened their own schools, she said. \u201cThe idea is people go through a training program, get a CNA certificate and there\u2019s a guaranteed job at the end of it as a way to help people launch their careers.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Green hopes that the program will help maintain staffing, and that many will stay on and progress to become licensed vocational nurses or registered nurses, which require more training.<\/p>\n
SFCJL\u2019s free CNA training program is the latest, but not the only, initiative to try to bolster the caregiver workforce, which has historically been plagued by low wages and demanding physical and emotional work.<\/p>\n
Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n
In 2022, LeadingAge California, a Sacramento advocacy group that represents aging services providers, launched a three-year program to recruit, train and employ new CNAs and home health aides in California.The program covered full tuition fees for students and was funded by $35 million in grants from the state Department of Health Care Access and Information and Department of Aging.\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"Newly]()
<\/p>\n
Newly certified nursing assistants Analynn Mausisa, left, Arnold Pabalate, center, and Juliet Ramos demonstrate a care technique with a mannequin used during their training at the San Francisco Campus for Jewish Living in San Francisco.<\/p>\n
Jana A\u0161enbrennerov\u00e1\/For the S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n
The program, which ended in July 2025, trained 6,200 people. About 3,500 passed the CNA certification exam. It also offered bonuses to graduates to stay at a caregiver job for one month, six months and a year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The organization has the infrastructure and capacity to continue the program, but does not have enough state or private funding to relaunch it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got a long way to go to make sure there are sufficient workers to care for older adults,\u201d said LeadingAge California President and CEO Jeannee Parker Martin.<\/p>\n
Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n
CNA training includes learning how to help residents with activities of daily living, such as bathing, getting dressed and going to the bathroom. For SFCJL\u2019s program, the classes and clinical components, like learning how to operate lifts to transfer residents from their bed to a wheelchair, were all done on-site at the SFCJL.<\/p>\n
Funding for the tuition came from donors and a grant from the California Association of Health Facilities, a nonprofit trade group that represents skilled nursing facilities.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"Newly]()
<\/p>\n
Newly certified nursing assistants Analynn Mausisa, left, and Juliet Ramos help resident Kenny Gallo set up lunch in Gallo\u2019s room at the San Francisco Campus for Jewish Living in San Francisco.<\/p>\n
Jana A\u0161enbrennerov\u00e1\/For the S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n
Mausisa had already been thinking about starting a CNA training program, but kept putting it off because the prospect of going to school on top of her job felt daunting. Having the training on-site and being paid for her time\u00a0\u2014 she continued to earn her security monitor salary during\u00a0 CNA training\u00a0\u2014 helped make it more convenient.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n
\u201cIt helped me financially because it\u2019s free and it saved time,\u201d Mausisa said. \u201cI get significant benefits for my career and I have a secure job.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Juliet Ramos, a newly certified nursing assistant, embraces resident Estrellita Lavarias in Lavarias\u2019 room at the San Francisco…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":350482,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,15,1570],"class_list":["post-350481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-education","tag-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=350481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350481\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/350482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=350481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=350481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=350481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}