With a sweeping new executive order, President Joe Biden is looking to ease pressure on the nation’s beleaguered home and community-based services system.

The White House described the order, which Biden signed Tuesday in a Rose Garden ceremony, as “the most comprehensive set of executive actions any president has ever taken to improve care for hard-working families while supporting care workers and family caregivers.”

It tasks nearly every cabinet-level agency in the federal government with various efforts to expand access to affordable, high-quality care and provide support for both paid and family caregivers.

“Under this order, almost every federal agency will collectively take over 50 actions to provide more peace of mind for families and dignity for care workers who deserve jobs with good pay and good benefits,” Biden said.

The executive order is broad ranging, addressing everything from child care to long-term care for the elderly and people with disabilities. It calls on federal agencies to identify any existing grant programs that can support care for those working on federal projects and to consider requiring entities seeking federal job-creating funds to expand access to care for their workers.

In addition, Biden’s order urges the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to consider issuing regulations and guidance aimed at improving the quality of home care jobs by leveraging Medicaid and other means. And, officials said that the Department of Labor will release a sample employment agreement to help long-term care workers and their employers better understand these workers’ rights.

“I’ve also instructed the Department of Health and Human Services to figure out how home care workers can get the pay they deserve with the money already allocated,” Biden indicated. “Care workers deserve to make a decent living.”

The White House noted that costs for long-term care have risen 40% in the last decade while care providers continue to receive low pay and few benefits, leading to high turnover. Meanwhile, the Biden administration said that over three-quarters of home and community-based services providers are turning away new clients and hundreds of thousands of people remain on waiting lists for services.

Biden has repeatedly asked Congress in recent years to invest billions of additional dollars into the home and community-based services system nationwide, but so far those calls have gone unheeded. His latest budget proposal seeks $150 billion for home and community-based services over the next decade.

“President Biden took the significant step today of recognizing the value of family and paid caregiving across the life cycle including for people with disabilities. These are important steps that the administration can take on its own, and we look forward to working with them on developing and implementing these changes,” said David Goldfarb, director of policy at The Arc. “We hope Congress can follow the administration’s example and work on a bipartisan basis to expand access to these services and raise direct care worker wages.”