YHA is a caregiver school opening in Houston this winter. You already know how to show up for someone. What you need is the training, the hours on paper and the signature that lets an employer pay you properly for it.
Houston runs on caregivers. They are on the first bus out of Alief and the last one back from the Medical Center. Many of them are excellent at the work and stuck at the bottom of the pay scale, because nobody has ever put their hours on paper.
That is the entire problem YHA exists to fix. Not to teach you to care. You do that already, for your mother, your neighbour, your husband after the stroke. What we do is turn it into a credential an employer has to recognise, in weeks rather than years, on a schedule built around the job you cannot afford to quit yet.
We are a small school on purpose. Twenty four seats a cohort. If you are in the room, somebody knows your name and notices when you go quiet.
Nobody enrols in a caregiver course by accident. Almost everyone arrives carrying a specific reason. These are the four we hear most, and each one changed something about how the school runs.
You handle her medication, her appointments, her bad nights. You have never been paid for a minute of it. A certificate turns eight years of unpaid experience into a job that pays, and often lets you keep caring for her too.
Retail, warehouse, drive through. The hours move every week and the ceiling is low. Care work is hard in different ways, but the floor is higher, the demand is real, and there is somewhere to go after year one.
Kids down at nine, coursework at half nine. Our evening track meets three nights a week and every handout is on paper as well as online, because your phone data is not infinite and the library closes.
Nurse aide is where a great many nurses started. The hours you bank here count as real clinical experience when you apply to an LVN or RN bridge, and we will help you write that application.
These are not tiers. They lead to different workplaces and different licences. Ring us and we will tell you honestly which one you need, including when the answer is the cheapest one.
The one hospitals, nursing homes and rehab units hire for. Classroom, skills lab, then 40 hours of supervised clinical on a real floor. Ends with the state competency exam and your name on the nurse aide registry.
Five weeks. $1,290 all in, before funding.
For work inside people's homes, usually through an agency. Meets the federal standard at 42 CFR 484.80, including the 16 classroom hours that must come before you ever touch a client and 16 hours of supervised practical.
Three weeks. $795 all in, before funding.
For private hire, companion work, and for families who are caring for someone at home and want to stop guessing. No state exam at the end, but the same skills lab and the same instructors.
Two weeks. $450 all in, before funding.
Tell us the job advert you are looking at and we will tell you which certificate it actually requires. That call is free and takes about ten minutes. Book the call
Caregiver training is measured in clock hours because the rules are written that way, and because the sequence matters. You cannot be in a client's home before the classroom hours are done. Here is the order, using the Home Health Aide route as the example.
You will lift people. You will clean up things you would rather not describe at dinner. Some of the people you look after will die, and one of them will matter to you more than you expected. Anyone who sells you this course as easy money is lying to you and you should walk away from them.
What we can tell you honestly: it is steady work in a city that is short of people who do it well. It is one of the few jobs where being patient and observant is worth more than a degree. And it opens doors that stay shut to almost everything else you can train for in five weeks.
We would rather you find out in week one that this is not for you than in month three on somebody's night shift. So the first Saturday of every cohort is a full day in the skills lab doing the least glamorous parts of the job. If you want out after that, you get your money back. That has never once been a bad trade for either side.
Every figure below is the total. Textbook, scrubs, background check and exam fee are already inside it. If we ever add a charge after you enrol, it is our mistake and we eat it.
| Programme | Hours | Length | Total | Founding cohort |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Certified Nurse Aide | 120 | 5 weeks | $1,290 | $1,090 |
| Home Health Aide | 75 | 3 weeks | $795 | $595 |
| Caregiver Foundations | 40 | 2 weeks | $450 | $350 |
| Dementia Care Specialist | 16 | 2 days | $240 | Included |
| CPR, AED and First Aid | 6 | 1 day | $70 | Included |
$300 to hold your seat, then three payments of the balance while you study. No interest, no credit check, no third party.
Many students pay nothing. Nurse aide training is often covered through Workforce Solutions, and we help with the paperwork.
Four full scholarships per cohort, named after the woman who taught our founder to make a bed with someone still in it.
We are building relationships with employers across Houston now, before the first cohort even starts, so that the week you finish there is somewhere to send you.
Placement support is not a job guarantee and you should be suspicious of any school that offers one. What we do offer is concrete: we help you write the application, we practise the interview with you, we send your name to the agencies we know, and we keep doing it until you land somewhere, whether that takes two weeks or five months.
You also keep the alumni line. If you are three months in and something has gone wrong on a shift, or a supervisor is asking you to do something outside your scope, you can ring the school and speak to an instructor. That is the ally part of the name, and it does not expire.
These are conversations in progress, not signed placement agreements. We will say so plainly on this page the day that changes.
Every other school this size has a page of five star reviews. Ours would be fiction until January. Instead, here is what people who have worked in this field for a long time say about why we are opening.
I have hired aides for nineteen years. The good ones almost never come from the biggest programmes. They come from wherever somebody actually watched them do the skill and told them the truth about it.Denise Okoro, RN · Director of Nursing, assisted living, Houston · Advisory board
The shortage is not people who want the work. It is people who can afford six weeks of no income to get trained for it. Solve that and you have solved most of it.Marcus Reyes · Owner, home care agency, southwest Houston · Advisory board
I looked after my father for four years and I still did not know how to move him without hurting us both. Somebody should have taught me that in week one, not year three.Angela Whitmore · Family caregiver · Pilot workshop, June 2026
Advisory board members are not paid and do not guarantee employment to our students.
Tell us which programme you are leaning towards and how you would need to pay for it. We will send you the start dates, the funding routes you personally qualify for, and a note when tours open in November. No deposit until you have seen the place.
