Developing Resilience in the Aged and Dementia Care Workforce

Developing resilience in the aged and dementia care workforce is an important element of support given their high demand environment. In this chapter, we outline the key known factors relevant for resiliency of aged and dementia care workforces, focusing on direct care workers who provide health care and physical, emotional, and social support to older adults and people with dementia as part of their job roles. We describe workforce characteristics, job demands, and resources, as well as personal and emotional responses to work with international comparisons made where information is available. Several theoretical constructs in social and organizational psychology are overviewed and applied to the investigation of resilience in care work contexts. Organizational psychology can help the aged care sector prepare for the increased need to attract and retain a resilient workforce. Occupational communion is one of the several new theoretical constructs that provide potential for strategies for interventional support and training. Our work suggests that measurement models should be developed that consider positive coping specific to the social nature of caring and the neurodegenerative conditions such as dementia, as well as the characteristics of the workforce.