Vision 2025 develops workforce leaders to address needs of an aging population

As the U.S. population rapidly ages, the Vision 2025 initiative is designed to create leaders in the senior housing and care professions. LCS and the LCS Foundation play a significant role in addressing the needs of an aging population and the future workforce through the partnership with Vision 2025.

This initiative is a national campaign supported by a collaboration of stakeholders and focuses on training leaders for senior housing and care positions. Vision 2025 has an accelerated set of goals:

• Create 25 robust and financially sustainable senior living and health services leadership programs that are geographically and culturally diverse.
• Develop 1,000 paid, quality field experiences for senior housing and health services leaders.
• Advance 15 mutually beneficial and strategic partnerships to expand educational opportunities and create urgency around the workforce development challenges facing the aging services sector.

Beginning with the initial 2019 senior living symposium, the initiative’s leadership hit the ground running. It was there the work began with a well-constructed framework that is critical for the future. Vital conversations were sparked, and valuable perspectives were collected directly from those at the forefront of the senior living education and senior care administration fields.

Vision 2025’s progress since 2019 has been significant, despite the pandemic and the disruption it caused for the endorsing organizations. Since January of 2020, Vision 2025 has gained two new endorsing organizations who have stepped up to support the effort in various ways.

Second, the initiative has doubled the number of universities that have shown interest in either starting a senior living and health sciences leadership program or expanding/strengthening their current program.

Lastly, Vision 2025 has established a virtual presence, with a website and social media pages where updates and resources are easily shared for anyone who follows or likes the pages.

“I would consider this year’s virtual event on June 22 a success, primarily because we were able to engage with a noteworthy number of university leaders,” says Taylor Darby, managing project director, Vision 2025.

“During the 2019 Symposium, 20 universities were represented primarily by non-leadership representatives,” says Darby. “Our virtual event this year allowed us to have more than 40 universities join in the conversation. We had many participants in leadership roles including deans, provosts, and presidents.”

The breakout group conversations provided valuable takeaways. “Many attendees have reached out to share their appreciation for the time to have intimate discussions with Vision 2025 steering committee members, peers, and potential partners,” says Darby.

What’s Important To Know

Vision 2025 is becoming an information hub. With representatives from all major industry associations and the two largest providers in the industry, Vision 2025 is a great starting point when looking for information on internships, partnerships, and university programs. As the various directories and materials are created, the Resources area of the website will become more robust and valuable for stakeholders

For more information about Vision 2025, please click here.