Professionals and paraprofessionals working in long term care facilities for institutionalized older people come from various educational backgrounds. To investigate the learning needs of long term care employees in gerontology, and to determine the validity of the Foundations for Gerontological Education Project as it relates to long term care continuing education, a needs assessment questionnaire was developed using the results of the Foundations Project survey on gerontological education. The questionnaire, listing 40 topics on aging and 27 skills in working with older adults, was completed by a random sample of 74 employees (an 80 percent response rate) of a comprehensive retirement community in Southwestern Ohio. An analysis of the results showed that, due to the unique characteristics of the retirement community, the data that were generated were adequate in determining the training needs of the facility surveyed, but unreliable for projecting the training needs of employees in other long term care facilities. All employees of this facility rated age related topics and training skills needs (e.g., communicating with the elderly, affective needs and responses, and death and dying) as very important. More generic topics and skills such as personality development and pathology were of interest only to professional employees. The findings support the curricular content identified by the Foundations Project. (BL)