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January 11, 2008
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In This Issue:
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A Lifetime of Love
For as long as I can remember, my mom has been a direct-care worker. When I was little, she used to take me on her jobs to help. I can still remember her client, George; she used to give him his favorite candy bar every day just to see a smile on his face. My mom loves working and being with her clients. She makes sure that each and every one of them is properly taken care of. People say, "Don't get personally involved with your clients because it might interfere with your work." That may be true in most jobs, but you need to be personal when you are a direct-care worker.
Click here for the rest of this essay and a poem, both written by 15-year-old Stephanie Pritchard (above left) about her mother, Jenn Craigue (above right), and other direct-care workers.
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If I Don't Take Care of Myself, I'm No Good to Anybody
I've been interested in caring for others from a very young age. In school, when somebody was getting picked on, I would stick up for her. I guess I've always been a bit of a mother hen!
Recently, though, I've had to worry about myself, too. There's a history of diabetes in women in my family, and lately I've been having all the signs - unquenchable thirst, frequent bathroom breaks, dizziness, and sleeplessness. My mother gave me a monitor for my sugar levels and I've tested as high as 420 - you can go into a coma at 500. Eunice called the diabetes clinic for me, and they told me to go to the ER. But I can't afford to do that.
Click here for the rest of Tina's story.
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If you're reading this in a web browser, return to your e-mail to vote. Votes cast from the browser are not counted.
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According to a recent Herdon poll, female voters do NOT respond well to which of the following phrases?
The correct answer (which 17% of you got right): Universal coverage
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Dear Friend,
Even when PhDs are involved, predicting the future is more of an art than a science. In this issue's News section, you'll find speculation by two very different kinds of experts - an economist and a group of robotics engineers - on how long-term care will look in the next decade or two.
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Proposed Assisted Living Regs Open for Comment in New York
Advocates for better staffing in New York's assisted living facilities have until January 25 to comment on proposed new regulations.
The original wording of the regulations was significantly altered after nearly a thousand people submitted comments. One of the most commonly cited themes was support for a nurse staffing standard for enhanced and special needs assisted living.
Comments on the revised version may be submitted through the Long Term Care Community Coalition website.
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New York Asked to Help Cover Direct-Care Workers
The Mental Health Association of New York State has asked the state to help provide health care coverage to direct-care workers. An editorial in last Sunday's Albany Times Union urged New York Governor Eliot Spitzer to grant the association's request by adding about $10 million to the state's new budget. The funding would provide an annual health insurance subsidy of $325 to each of the approximately 31,000 workers who assist people with mental disorders.
"These workers, like the thousands who provide direct care to patients with physical disabilities, receive low wages that make it difficult, or impossible, to afford decent health coverage for themselves. That itself is a great irony of the nation's health care crisis, of course: The very people who are essential to providing basic health care to others have a hard time affording coverage for themselves, says ""Help the Helpers."
Providing health care for direct-care workers is essential to fulfilling the state's obligation to assist people with mental disabilities, the editorial argues. "When the state emptied its mental institutions years ago, it did so with the promise of providing patients with community health care centers. That promise has never been fully kept. In any case, the promise means more than just providing programs and facilities. It means retaining a dedicated staff as well - by treating them fairly."
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Again with the robot nursing assistants
An article in the January 7 issue of the Washington Post says a "small army" of robots designed to assist with elder care on display at a recent Tokyo exhibit are being touted as the answer to Japan's looming demographic crisis. "One such gizmo, on display at the show, can spoon-feed the elderly. Others are being designed to hoist them onto a toilet and phone a nurse when they won't take their pills," says "Demographic Crisis, Robotic Cure?"
Japan already has "the world's largest proportion of residents over 65 and smallest proportion of children under 15," the article points out, and the marriage and birth rate among young women is low. And, while workers from other countries could fill open slots, political opposition to immigration remains strong.
"There are critics who describe the robot cure for an aging society as little more than high-tech quackery," the article notes. "They say that robots are a politically expedient palliative that allows politicians and corporate leaders to avoid wrenchingly difficult social issues, such as Japan's deep-seated aversion to immigration, its chronic shortage of affordable day care and Japanese women's increasing rejection of motherhood."
Where you stand on the issue depends on your answer to the rhetorical question asked by a Toyota division manager. "Are you going to let strangers into your home?" he said. "Or do you have robots?"
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The Pig in the Python
An article in the January/February Atlantic Monthly looks at how the pending retirement of the baby boomers - who have been moving through the nation's demographic charts like a pig through a python - will "transform the texture of our society."
"Young people buy goods, like cars, houses, and iPods. Old people need services, like transportation, meal preparation, and health care," notes economist Megan McArdle in "No Country for Young Men." This means our economy will reverse its trend of becoming ever more efficient, since it takes less time than it once did to make a car, but "it still takes about the same amount of time as it always did to drive a senior to a doctor's appointment, or to help an older patient bathe and dress."
Not only will we need more service workers, but they'll be providing different services. "In effect, the next 20 years will require a massive transfer of resources and people away from the care of children, who will decline in relative number, and toward the care of old people." And to attract the needed workers, McArdle says, we'll need to boost the pay of people who care for elders.
"The political battles over all of this will be bitter," McArdle predicts, "and they will probably be, too often, won by the retirees, who vote in force (though not always as a bloc). Those same retirees may also vote against things that are actually in their interest - thus shutting out the immigrants who could help them stay at home, and out of the nursing home, longer; turning down school taxes that could create a more productive workforce to support them; fighting for zoning restrictions that make it harder for the low-income workers who provide their services to live within easy commuting distance."
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Free Flu Shots Can Boost Health, Morale
Providing free flu shots for the staff of long-term care facilities is a business investment that pays off, according to a story in this month's issue of Provider magazine.
In "Perceptions are a Worker's Reality," authors David J. Farrell and Mary Larson of Lumetra, Medicare's quality improvement organization for California, point out that free shots prevent staff illness and protect residents against infection. They also boost morale, they say, by "demonstrating that management cares about staff."
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February 23, 2008
National Association of Workforce Boards (NAWB) Annual Forum
January 27, 2008
The 3nd Annual Private Duty Home Care Leadership Summit
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