If your child receives In-Home Support Services (IHSS) and you’re a paid parent provider, the IHSS Career Pathways program provides training opportunities to improve your skills. Here are the available course pathways with a variety of classes under each subject:
General Pathways
Specialized Pathways
Not only can you get reimbursed for attending courses, but the program also provides incentives to complete a certain number of training hours. You can get credit for time spent in courses and completion bonuses for:
All three incentives can be earned with the same completed specialized pathway. The challenge is finding enough classes in a single pathway.
Note that the incentive program is slated to end in December 2023, so if you're hoping to get the one-month and six-month incentives, you need to have all your classes completed by May. The incentives run consecutively, so you need to complete the 15 hours of specialized pathway courses, work for one month with at least 40 hours of service, claim incentive #2, work at least 40 hours per month for six months, and claim incentive #3.
You can still continue to take classes and get incentives #1 and #2 through December if the six-month incentive is not your goal. They are working on making more classes available, especially in the specialized pathways.
Here is a handy guide to the different counties/agencies and their links:
It's a good idea to check these a few times a week to see if new classes have opened. (You can see the Course Catalog for more classes and dates.) Homebridge just opened up some additional classes for April. Both Homebridge and San Diego offer a few self-paced online classes that are easy to complete at your convenience, although the self-paced versions of classes are only an hour, and you get 1.5 hours of credit for live Zoom versions of the same class.
To claim training time and incentive bonuses, log into the IHSS electronic timesheet portal and click on the drop-down menu in the top left corner. Click the drop-down option for “Time Entry” and select “Career Pathways.”
Then, select your claim type (training time or specific incentives) and your recipient. On the next page, you can enter your course information. Be sure to include the course number and list the course title exactly as it is written, even if you run out of room. Do not abbreviate it or the claim could get rejected. Be sure to include the time specified in the catalog for your course; the certificate of completion should tell you how much time to claim, and most certificates will also include the course name and title. If the certificate does not include the course number, refer to the Course Catalog and be sure to list the course number of the specific session you attended (sometimes the same course title will have two different course numbers for the self-paced version and the live version).
Counties are generally a little bit behind on approving Career Pathways time entries, so don’t be surprised if your claim takes a few extra weeks to be processed. You should get a confirmation email for each time entry that is approved. Be sure to look at the email to make sure it isn’t rejected. If a training time claim is rejected, review the reason given in the email. Most likely, the course information wasn’t entered correctly, and you can submit the entry again with the correct information.
