About Rewarding Work

The goal of Rewarding Work is to give people who need support with daily activities choice and control in finding personal assistants.

The Rewarding Work Website and related recruitment campaign has been cited as a "Promising Practice" by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Overview

Individuals with disabilities, elders, and their family members particularly, find it challenging to recruit support outside their immediate network of contacts. As states continue to move to expand home and community-based services-specifically, services that are consumer-directed-the need for additional support for individuals increases. And, as both caregivers and people with disabilities age, the demand will grow to huge proportions. This is coming at a time when the potential available workforce is decreasing.

Rewarding Work Resources, Inc., a 501(c) (3) nonprofit corporation, developed the Rewarding Work website which gives older people and individuals with disabilities the choice of hiring staff directly and allows them control of the process of hiring personal assistants. The site also provides private agencies a resource to assist in recruitment of direct support professionals and other staff.

Collaborative effort

The Website is a collaborative effort of the Massachusetts Department of Mental Retardation, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Center for Health Policy and Research, New Jersey Division of Disability Services, Connecticut Department of Mental Retardation, and Rhode Island Department of Human Services. It has been funded, in part, by New England States Consortium Systems Organization.

Rewarding Work incorporates advertising and public relations techniques to reach potential workers who contact the campaign through a telephone call center or through the Website. The call center consists of toll-free telephone numbers (888-444-1616 and 866-211-WORK) and 24/7 answering service, where professional operators respond to calls according to a pre-determined script.

Additional services

For people in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, who want help screening and hiring candidates, or help with the entire process, Rewarding Work offers an optional service through our partner, ARBOR Associates, a staffing organization with 25 years of experience.

Secure database

At present, Rewarding Work has a current database of nearly 20,000 names of job candidates who have completed an application either online or by telephone.

The list of registered employers is maintained in a secure database.

Rewarding Work incorporates advertising, public relations techniques, and web marketing to reach potential workers who contact Rewardingwork.org through a telephone call center or through the website. When candidates contact Rewarding Work either by phone or through the website, their names are added to a secure, password-protected database. The information in this database was obtained directly from the person, and therefore its accuracy cannot be assured.

Although candidates complete an application form before their information is posted on the Rewarding Work database, they have not been pre-screened for criminal history, verification of experience, or in any other way. The listing of their information does not imply an endorsement from RewardingWork.org or Rewarding Work Resources, Inc. Employers are responsible for searching, interviewing, and hiring job candidates from the Rewarding Work database.

Employers are given a password to gain access to the database. By accessing the Rewarding Work database, employers agree they will not use the database for any purpose other than to identify potential personal assistants. Employers are responsible for conforming to state and federal laws and regulations governing the employment of other people.

Rewarding Work Resources remains harmless from any and all claims of abuse or lack of performance or misfeasance or malfeasance from any party met from or through Rewardingwork.org or Rewarding Work Resources, Inc.