A new student loan repayment program — with no lifetime cap — is being used by one senior living provider as a recruitment tool for clinical staff members who have daunting school debt.
Goodwin Living, a faith-based, not-for-profit long-term care organization in Alexandria, VA, is offering clinical staff members up to $5,250 annually in student loan repayment grants. The program is one of the first of its kind in the region and is intended to attract more clinical professionals to the field, address the challenge of income and inflation as professionals pay back their loans, promote senior living and care as a viable long-term career path, and demonstrate the company’s attention to employees’ work life quality and emotional health, according to Goodwin Living Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer Lindsay Hutter.
Melinda Gren, Goodwin Living vice president of performance and operations for home- and community-based services, told McKnight’s Senior Living that the demand for clinical services to support older adults is dramatically outpacing the supply of talent. Coming out of the pandemic, and experiencing growth in demand for HCBS as well as more therapy services on its campuses, Goodwin Living revamped a previous student loan repayment program originally launched for registered nurses.
In conversations with staff members, Gren said, the organization learned that the average student loan debt for its clinical employees was $109,000, with individual debt ranging from $14,000 to $230,000. With the high cost of living in the region, the debt load creates added stress on team members, many of whom must maintain second jobs on the weekends to pay down that debt, she said.
Gren said she and others saw the potential for the Goodwin Living Foundation to launch a student loan repayment program to incentivize more clinical professionals to choose senior living and care as a career.
“I’ve never had the opportunity to be part of such an exciting ask,” Gren said, adding that she pursued the idea with Goodwin Living’s chief philanthropy officer and began researching programs in September. The program launched Jan. 1.
“It’s incredible from an attentiveness perspective that our foundation is understanding of the challenges we’re having and their willingness to support this,” she said.
The program is being funded by donors to the foundation from residents, community members who have received hospice or home health services, and a variety of other donors.
“The idea that the Goodwin Living Foundation can ease the burden of student loans on our clinical team members is transformational,” Goodwin Living Foundation Board of Directors Chair Joan Renner said in a statement. “If you think about the challenges that older adults are facing — not just today’s older adults, but the older adults of the future — Goodwin Living is helping to ensure a strong talent pipeline to care for older adults not only now, but in the future.”
To be eligible for the loan repayment program, employees must serve in clinical roles for at least two years. Staff members employed six months to two years are eligible for up to $2,625 annually in student loan repayment grants. Staff members can apply annually for a grant, and there are no lifetime caps to the grant awards.
Positions eligible for loan repayment grants include physical, occupational and speech therapists; RNs, licensed practical nurses and nurse practitioners; licensed therapeutic recreational team members; licensed social workers; licensed music and art therapists; medical technicians; certified nursing assistants; and registered dietitians.
Gren said that the organization started with clinical positions because those roles present the greatest challenges in recruitment and retention. Goodwin Living plans to collect baseline data to quantify the anticipated annual costs and the funds needed to support the program on an ongoing basis, Hutter said. Those and other data will help inform future possible decisions about expanding the program to other positions, she said.
Since advertising the program almost three weeks ago, the program already has received 12 applications.
Other recruitment and retention programs already underway at Goodwin Living include a citizenship program, a Nursing Pathways initiative that focuses on the clinical aspects of management development, an advanced CNA initiative, a LPN-to-RN pilot program, and tuition support for vocational training and college and graduate degrees.
