Research confirms anecdotal impressions of the following causes of high turnover among both home health and nursing home aides: low wages; inadequate benefits; excessive workloads; poor training, supervision, and working conditions; and job-related stress. Public policy initiatives can dramatically alleviate or exacerbate the crisis among long-term care workers. Such policies include cost control efforts of the past 5 years and recently enacted legislation to promote quality in nursing home and home health care. Most research done on long-term care workers has focused on home health aides. Future research should focus on the problems encountered by nursing home aides. A market area study of the nursing home work force and a study of states' compliance with new aide training requirements would help fill this gap. Future research should focus on similarities between these two categories of workers, with a view to streamlining planning for future needs and funding. Demonstration projects testing the success of various intervention methods in alleviating the long-term care worker shortage should be tested. Public policy should encourage successful passage of state-level legislation to improve conditions for long-term care workers. (Appendixes, amounting to over one-half of the report, include recommendations to Congress on access to health care and long-term care, a transcript of a bill to amend title XIX of the Social Security Act pertaining to the pay of nursing personnel, 7 newpaper and journal articles, and a 15-item bibliography.) (YLB)