Long-Time DCW Champion Joins DCA Staff

Vera Salter

I am delighted to announce that Vera Salter will join us part-time on January 1 as our new Professional Development Director. She will be responsible for developing a national credentialing program for personal care workers.

Vera has been a tireless supporter of direct care workers — and of the DCA — for years. She joined our board of directors in 2007, serving as vice chair before being elected chair last April. In her board role, she provided technical assistance and volunteer work to develop our credentialing project and helped design the curriculum for our Voices Institute National Leadership Program.

In her new position, Vera will lead the development of the Direct Care Alliance credentialing program. The project will create a competency-based credentialing system for personal assistance workers who aid elders and people with disabilities with the activities of daily living in their own homes.

Professionalizing the workforce via the credentialing project would benefit:

•    Workers, through increased skills, market value, and a job ladder.
•   Consumers, through access to better-qualified workers and information about the skill level of those they hire.
•   Agency employers, providing them with a market advantage through access to the better-qualified workers consumers want.

In this position, Vera will be working closely with DCA’s key stakeholders such as employers, family caregivers, elders, people with disabilities, and direct care workers. Vera’s superb expertise and her long-standing commitment to the empowerment of direct care workers bodes well for the success of the DCA’s credentialing efforts.

“I am honored to lead the development of the Direct Care Alliance’s credential,” she says. “Its national acceptance will bring respect and recognition to direct care work and increase its market value. I am also delighted to see the leadership of the board in the capable hands of two direct care workers: Jenn Craigue and Tracy Dudzinski. The Direct Care Alliance has a bright future ahead.”

In her last position, at PHI, Vera helped develop a definition of the work done by home care aides for a national apprenticeship program developed for the U.S. Department of Labor. Vera was the founding director of the National Clearinghouse on the Direct Care Workforce at PHI, where she worked from 2001 to 2007. Before that, she co-owned a national planning and marketing firm with clients across the continuum of health and long-term care services. She has served as vice-president of a multi-institutional healthcare system and held a number of health planning and research positions.

She holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Pittsburgh, with a concentration in health services research; a Master’s degree in Social Administration from the University of Essex; and a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from the University of Sussex.

We are honored to welcome her to our staff. 

Leonila Vega, Esq.
Executive Director
Direct Care Alliance