Hours before independent work

Definition

The share of a caregiver's training that has to be finished before they work alone.

Why It Matters

California splits forty hours in half. Twenty must be done before a caregiver works independently with residents, six of them on dementia care and four on postural supports and hospice, with the other twenty inside four weeks. Florida gates only two hours and puts its weight on the administrator instead, who has ninety days to complete core training. This is the hardest hiring constraint in the care trades, because turnover buys twenty hours of paid non-productive time per head, and the cost lands in overtime and agency cover, where nobody reads it as training.