Tag Archives: aging well

baby boomers, caregiving, dementia care, elder care, home care

There’s No Place Like Home

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You may not know Sandi McCann’s name just yet. But my guess is that by the end of this year, many more of us will know her and the work she is doing. McCann’s aim is to create nothing less than a national movement – training direct care workers to be highly skilled, professional and respected caregivers for elders and paying them accordingly as they learn and going forward.

Here’s why this is at once heartening, important, and challenging:

As our population ages, the simple truth is that more of us are going to need help to enable us to remain in our own homes as so many of us would prefer to do. The Milken Institute School of Public Health at The George Washington University, for one,  estimates that by 2050, 27 million of us will need some form of long-term care, more than double the number in 2010.

That will require an army of  direct care workers – including certified nursing assistants,  home health aides and personal care aides – to help us with the basics of daily living. Not to mention the importance of keeping a watchful eye on us to note troubling changes in our mood, our physical well-being or our mental functioning. It can be difficult, physically taxing work that requires strength, patience and presence of mind in the face of unexpected events or crises.

And yet, ironically, providing direct care for our most vulnerable citizens requires the least amount of training, experiences the highest turnover rate – and pays the least — of the caring professions. As the Institute of Medicine (now known as NASEM Health)  first noted in a  2008 report on  “Retooling for an Aging America: Building the Healthcare Workforce,” your dog groomer requires more training than that. (And may be paid more, to boot.)

And the work is getting harder. Care has become more complex. Often people are discharged from the hospital or a post-acute rehab facility before they are able to fend for themselves well. The effects of a stroke or dementia can be pronounced and challenging. And unlike long-term care settings, there are no policies and procedures in place to guide caregivers facing challenging situations in the home.

Here’s where Sandi McCann comes in. Her own commitment and passion for elder care grew from her experience as a caregiver for her stepmother, afflicted with Lewy Body dementia at the end of her life. She left a career in corporate marketing and in 2012, she and her sister Maureen started HomeCare of the Rockies, a home care agency in Boulder, Colorado. “I love working with older adults,” McCann told me. “They need to know that they’re heard, loved and cared for. And they need the right kind of care support for that.”

The Idea: A Call to Action

As the agency grew, a serious workforce shortage hindered its ability to serve as many people as it could have.  Always supportive of the importance of training, as well as imparting the agency’s mission and values to its team of caregivers, McCann began to closely follow the work of Ai-Jen Poo of the National Domestic Workers Alliance and Caring Across Generations, and the “Fight for $15” movement. She started formulating her own idea for a call to action.

McCann started Caregiver Call to Serve,  a subsidiary of HomeCare of the Rockies. Its mission will be to create “a sustainable network of care to help older adults live meaningful lives, not just long ones.”

This year will be its pilot program, providing training to all of HomeCare’s 90-person team and acting as a sort of “incubator” during which the curriculum may be adjusted before it is introduced  nationally. HomeCare of the Rockies will own this program fully, and will offer it to other organizations and agencies, offering “train the trainer” meetings.

Key to this initiative is what McCann calls “the triad” – Learn, Earn and Care. The “learn” part of the program includes 100 hours of professional caregiving education, 40 hours of which is online. Forty percent of the curriculum addresses issues of Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias.

The “care” part of the initiative aims to uphold professional standards and the integrity of the caregiving tradition, McCann said.

The “earn” part is what sets this initiative apart.  People enrolled in learning will get income boosts four times: after 25 hours, 50 hours, 75 hours and 100 hours of training, to reach $15 per hour. McCann said that that is nearly 40 percent higher than prevailing wages in Boulder.

McCann aims to launch Caregiver Call to Serve in May. It will screen a short video telling its story at a theater in Boulder, to be followed by a Town Hall meeting, all of which will be livestreamed. It has been accepted into the U.S. Dept. of Labor’s ApprenticeshipUSA program – a network of 150,000 employers representing more than 1,000 occupations — and will be working with the Department of Labor and Employment in Colorado to recruit and train caregivers.

There are more than 12,000 home health agencies in the U.S. There are many quite good caregiver and home health aide training programs too and I’ll focus on a few in future blogs. Will Caregiver Call to Serve break through the pack and, indeed, start a movement? I’d love to see it happen, because it’s not a moment too soon.

 

 

 

Advance Care Planning, baby boomers, elder care, hospice volunteering, wellness

Telling the Story of Your Life

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I recently sat in on a terrific session at the 2016 Hospice Team Conference in NJ. about the importance of narrative in hospice care, presented by Jeremy Lees, LSW , chaplain and bereavement counselor at Holy Name Medical Center’s hospice, where I am a volunteer.

It started me thinking about how important it is that we write or record the story of our life — not only for our loved ones, but also for ourselves. To make sense of the arc of our life, our place in the world, our sense of purpose. And the best time to do this is when we’re healthy and vital!

Here’s my latest blog post from SixtyandMe, with some tips about how to get started.

 

Advance Care Planning, death and dying, elder care, hospice care, Medical Crisis, nursing homes, palliative care

6 Steps To Take for Better End-of-Life Care

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I was honored recently to be asked by the Berkeley, California-based Greater Good Science Center to do an essay, based on my experiences as a hospice volunteer and reporting/researching my book. Here are the highlights:

* Educate yourself about the different key treatments for end-of-life care, so that you can make informed decisions.
* Start conversations with loved ones so that they are clear about your wishes for care.
* Understand the benefits of palliative care and hospice care and know when to ask for them.
* Learn how to communicate effectively with doctors and medical staff.
* Research nursing and assisted living facilities in your community, in case you need them.
* Advocate for better end-of-life care for everyone.

You can read the full essay here

Advance Care Planning, baby boomers, death and dying, dementia care, elder care, hospice care

Finding Quality Care for Serious Illness — Before a Medical Crisis Hits

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IMG_1100 I’m excited and honored to tell you that this fall, I’m teaching a new two-session course called “Let’s Manage Late Life Well” at the Lois E. Marshall Institute for Learning in Retirement (ILR) at Bergen Community College in Paramus, NJ. The course will be offered on October 31 and November 7, from 10:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. You can register for this and other courses at the ILR starting on Monday, August 29.

Too often, caregivers and people struggling with serious illness face medical crises that leave them feeling confused, frightened and overwhelmed. The best way to prevent that feeling of being lost and powerless in the health care system is by becoming better educated before a medical crisis hits.

The course is designed to help people become better educated about what good quality care looks like; as well as how to communicate better with health care professionals; how to make better-informed decisions for themselves or their loved ones; and how to find the information we all need about the conditions that we are likely to face in late life.

“Let’s Manage Late-Life Well” is a “bonus” course, offered at no extra charge with ILR membership for the Fall 2016 and Spring 2017. ILR membership entitles you to four courses each semester, plus two additional “bonus” courses. Full membership fee for Fall 2016 and Spring 2017 is $215. Registration begins on August 29th for the Fall 2016 semester.

This course will cover:
• An overview of innovations in late-life care (including those in NJ).
• How to communicate better with our health care specialists.
• How to learn about the quality of care in hospitals and long-term care facilities.
• Better alternatives to conventional skilled nursing homes.
• Strategies and tips for those caring for loved ones with dementia.
• What you need to know about advance care directives vs. POLST (Physician Orders for Life Sustaining Treatment) forms.
• Dispelling the many myths about palliative and hospice care.
• Plus: Where to find help: useful resources and links for caregivers and for people contending with serious illness.

Advance Care Planning, baby boomers, elder care, wellness

Keep It Moving: A Key to Well-Being

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You know the old cliché: Age is only a number. Well now there’s a study that suggests that it’s true; and that age alone isn’t the best predictor of health. I wanted to share some of the study’s findings because, at a time when we are assaulted daily with horrendous and dispiriting news on all fronts, this should give many of us a reason to smile.

Here’s what a large-scale study by a multi-disciplinary team of researchers at the University of Chicago found: psychological well-being, sensory function, mobility and health behaviors are essential parts of an overall health profile that predicts mortality better than age alone. (Italics mine.)

Rather than focus on medical issues, such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure and cholesterol levels, these researchers came up with a different model of health that considers psychological, social and physical factors, such as mobility. It paints a different picture of how vulnerable – or not — we might actually be.

Demographer and study co-author Prof. Linda Waite said that “some people with chronic disease are revealed as having many strengths that lead to their reclassification as quite healthy, with low risks of death and incapacity.” On the other hand, though, some people considered healthy might have significant vulnerabilities that could affect their mortality or incapacity within five years.

What contributes to those vulnerabilities? Social isolation, as if we hadn’t guessed this before, undermines people’s health. So does poor mental health, like the depression that can accompany social isolation. Poor mental health is said to affect one in eight older adults. Poor sleep patterns, heavy drinking, having a poor sense of smell and walking slowly also undermine health. By contrast, being socially engaged helps keep us healthy, as does staying physically active. Mobility, in fact, is one of the “best markers of well-being,” according to the study.

And here is a not-so-fun fact: Breaking a bone after age 45 is a “major marker for future health issues,” the study concluded.

Among the more interesting – and counterintuitive – findings:
• Cancer itself is not related to other conditions that undermine health.
• Obesity seems to pose little risk to older adults with excellent physical and mental health.  
• Older men and women have different patterns of health and well-being during aging (and yes, women tend to live longer).

The study, part of the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project, supported by the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health, surveys a representative sample of 3,000 people aged 57 to 85, done by the independent research organization NORC at the University of Chicago. You can read “An Empirical Redefinition of Comprehensive Health and Well-being in the Older Adults of the U.S.,” in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences here.

So let’s get together with our friends and family, take a walk (being careful not to trip and break a bone) and raise a toast (though not too many) to our health. Let’s make sure we can smell the roses. Literally. And on a more serious note, let’s pay attention to what our communities are doing to help ease elders’ loneliness and isolation.

baby boomers, elder care, long-term care

Can We Aim to Stay Forever Young?

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May being Older Americans Month,two recent stories caught my eye for very different, but related, reasons. The first told the story of Ida Keeling, a 100-year-old woman who just set a new world record for the 100-meter dash in her age-80-and-up category.

freedom-307791_1280Who could not feel deeply impressed and inspired, reading about how she overcame struggles that might have crushed the fainter-of-heart, and how she discovered renewed pleasure in fitness and competition? Who could not watch the video of her sprinting across the finish line at the Penn Relays in Philadelphia and not think, now there is something to aspire to? If not the actual running part, then certainly in pursuing another endeavor of our own.

And then there was the Wall Street Journal story, about how people from all over the globe have tracked down Nir Barzilai, director of the Institute for Aging Research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, to volunteer to be part of a study that Dr. Barzilai and his colleagues are working on – even though patient recruitment is still a year away, reporter Jennifer Levitz reported.

Why are they clamoring to reach Dr. Barzilai? Because the planned study will use the generic drug metformin to see if it can delay or prevent dreaded illnesses of old age, including heart disease, cancer and dementia. Gerontologists at 14 aging centers around the U.S. will follow 3,000 seniors for six years, half of whom would get the drug, with the others receiving a placebo.

Levitz interviewed a number of these would-be volunteers and discovered that they were, uniformly, feeling well and living very active lives and feared a future of frailty and decline. “It’s not so much a fear of dying, it’s a fear of living in pain and agony and being a burden to everyone else and my wife and so forth,” Bill Thygerson, 70, told Levitz.

These two stories struck me because they both seemed to personify our never-ending quest for youthfulness and vitality. Living the robust life, fully and independently. Isn’t that what we’re all aiming for? I’m as prone as the next aging boomer for valuing that. I don’t feel “old” and like most of my peers, I keep revising my idea of the very definition of the word “old.”

But the fact is, 60-ish isn’t the new 40. Or 50. So for me, these stories prompted a reaction of “Yes, but…” We all can’t be Ida Keeling. In reality, all it takes is just a little blip in the flow of our days, just a hiccup in our active and independent lives, to remind us that sometimes we have to take a pause and accept a little help. And looking ahead, many of us will need more than a little help to ease our days whether we remain in our homes or not.

That’s why I found this interview with Ai-jen Poo so refreshing. She is the director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, co-director of the Caring Across Generations campaign and author of The Age of Dignity: Preparing for the Elder Boom in a Changing America. Right now several states are experiencing a shortage of home health and personal care aides. At the same time, those jobs are among the lowest paid and least valued in the country. So it’s up to all of us to begin talking about what we’ll need to live as well as possible in years to come and, equally important, figuring out how to value and train these workers better and best to pay for it all. Let’s remember that while we’re busy looking, feeling and acting forever young.