While nearly everyone says that they want to stay at home until they die, not everyone can. And not everyone should. Sometimes, living at home can mean loneliness, helplessness, and boredom. Another sort of setting can be more like what home should be than the places people have been living.
Some successful solutions will be explored in the second of the pre-competition events leading to the UWM Senior Housing Ideas Competition tonight at 6:30 pm, Zelazo Hall. (Our Expanding Housing Options Summit was the first.)
Dr. William Thomas, founder of the Eden Alternative (EA), will speak. If you don't know about the EA, it's a movement to revolutionize the way people live, especially older adults in the places we've been calling nursing homes.
According to the EA website,
We create coalitions of people and organizations that are committed to creating better social and physical environments for people. We are dedicated to helping others create enlivening environments and the elimination of the plagues of Loneliness, Helplessness, and Boredom. We are dedicated to helping people grow.
The core concept of The Eden Alternative™ is strikingly simple. We must teach ourselves to see the environments as habitats for human beings rather than facilities for the frail and elderly. We must learn what Mother Nature has to teach us about the creation of vibrant, vigorous habitats.
Living in a vital community. Isn't that what we all want?
Showing posts with label Milwaukee. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Milwaukee. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 7, 2007
Tuesday, January 9, 2007
Close to home
There are only four kinds of people in the world: those who have been caregivers; those who are currently caregivers; those who will be caregivers; those who will need caregivers.
Oh boyhowdy, was Rosalynn Carter right about that!
There’s another group, though: those of us who should – or would like to - be caregivers but can’t and feel guilty about it.
I’m in that group. While Mom lives independently in senior apartments, she can’t drive anymore and needs help with transportation and other things. Because she lives in Oshkosh, and because I’m a sandwicher with kids still at home, my sister and niece share the privilege and responsibility. I know my sister is overwhelmed sometimes, and tired often.
A friend of mine e-mailed me today to explain that she wasn’t coming to our women’s group meeting tonight because she was in California. Her mother had a bad fall and had been having a rocky recuperation.
I'm flying back to Milwaukee Wednesday. My sister-in-law will be here for a couple of days. The big question then becomes whether or not Mom and William will accept the amount of home-health assistance Mom really requires for as long as she requires it.
Concerns about caregiving are everywhere, if you talk to people long enough. Without a “seamless” system of caregiving, everyone has to figure out how to patch together a net of help that eventually goes beyond family and friends.
The umbrella name for all that’s needed, I’ve recently learned, is longterm care. I used to think that meant nursing homes!
In Milwaukee County, we’re fortunate to have Connecting Caring Communities to help in “developing partnerships to improve long term care and supportive services systems to meet the current and future needs of older adults” and in getting the word out on longterm care.
And then there's Elderlink, a great centralized source of information and assistance. Calling 414-289-6874 opens the doors of information to the county's older people and those who are helping them.
Maybe later we can talk about the two elephants in the room when we're on the subject of caregivers this subject. The first is public policy for a national system of caregiving: there isn’t one.
The second is gender: caregiving is largely a woman’s issue. The white paper Caregiving in America, prepared in conjunction with the Caregiving Project for Older Americans and available online, found that 90% of unpaid caregivers are women. And most of the people they care for are women. Especially when you enter the domain of the old old, those over age 85.
Mom, if you're reading this: you don't look old old, though I know sometimes you feel it.
Oh boyhowdy, was Rosalynn Carter right about that!
There’s another group, though: those of us who should – or would like to - be caregivers but can’t and feel guilty about it.
I’m in that group. While Mom lives independently in senior apartments, she can’t drive anymore and needs help with transportation and other things. Because she lives in Oshkosh, and because I’m a sandwicher with kids still at home, my sister and niece share the privilege and responsibility. I know my sister is overwhelmed sometimes, and tired often.
A friend of mine e-mailed me today to explain that she wasn’t coming to our women’s group meeting tonight because she was in California. Her mother had a bad fall and had been having a rocky recuperation.
I'm flying back to Milwaukee Wednesday. My sister-in-law will be here for a couple of days. The big question then becomes whether or not Mom and William will accept the amount of home-health assistance Mom really requires for as long as she requires it.
Concerns about caregiving are everywhere, if you talk to people long enough. Without a “seamless” system of caregiving, everyone has to figure out how to patch together a net of help that eventually goes beyond family and friends.
The umbrella name for all that’s needed, I’ve recently learned, is longterm care. I used to think that meant nursing homes!
In Milwaukee County, we’re fortunate to have Connecting Caring Communities to help in “developing partnerships to improve long term care and supportive services systems to meet the current and future needs of older adults” and in getting the word out on longterm care.
And then there's Elderlink, a great centralized source of information and assistance. Calling 414-289-6874 opens the doors of information to the county's older people and those who are helping them.
Maybe later we can talk about the two elephants in the room when we're on the subject of caregivers this subject. The first is public policy for a national system of caregiving: there isn’t one.
The second is gender: caregiving is largely a woman’s issue. The white paper Caregiving in America, prepared in conjunction with the Caregiving Project for Older Americans and available online, found that 90% of unpaid caregivers are women. And most of the people they care for are women. Especially when you enter the domain of the old old, those over age 85.
Mom, if you're reading this: you don't look old old, though I know sometimes you feel it.
Monday, January 8, 2007
Why blog on aging for folks in "the business"?
One thing I’ve learned about life stages: you can understand the ones you’ve already been through. Sort of. But the ones that lie ahead of you, you can only imagine. Stories other people tell us about their experiences are one of the best ways to imagine ourselves into empathy and, maybe, brilliant acts.
A blog is a great place to share those stories.
Some of what goes on in our personal and work lives just doesn't fit into the usual categories--reports, analyses, news stories, instructional materials. It comes from the place where who we are intersects with what we do.
A blog is a great place to explore the intersections.
Sometimes, the stories around us fill us with despair. A blog is a great place to mark and honor the sadness--or to write new, happier endings.
More mundanely, this blog was created because it’s part of our communications plan to develop new ways to connect members of the Milwaukee Aging Consortium around common issues in the work we do, the people we care about and for.
Finally, in learning about this field—a new one for me, a career change--I’m turning up fascinating information, ideas, people, and programs that I want to share.
Here's a ferinstance: Milwaukee's Danceworks Gallery is opening a mixed media exhibition Walking in Someone Else's Shoes starting Friday, January 19, from 6 - 9. The exhibit is "envisioned stories and works (that) celebrate the lives of Milwaukee elders and youth. . ." It's part of the ongoing Intergenerational Multi-Arts Project (IMAP), and it will continue through April 11. The opening also takes place during the Third Ward's Gallery Night And Day.
“It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.”
--Pablo Picasso
A blog is a great place to share those stories.
Some of what goes on in our personal and work lives just doesn't fit into the usual categories--reports, analyses, news stories, instructional materials. It comes from the place where who we are intersects with what we do.
A blog is a great place to explore the intersections.
Sometimes, the stories around us fill us with despair. A blog is a great place to mark and honor the sadness--or to write new, happier endings.
More mundanely, this blog was created because it’s part of our communications plan to develop new ways to connect members of the Milwaukee Aging Consortium around common issues in the work we do, the people we care about and for.
Finally, in learning about this field—a new one for me, a career change--I’m turning up fascinating information, ideas, people, and programs that I want to share.
Here's a ferinstance: Milwaukee's Danceworks Gallery is opening a mixed media exhibition Walking in Someone Else's Shoes starting Friday, January 19, from 6 - 9. The exhibit is "envisioned stories and works (that) celebrate the lives of Milwaukee elders and youth. . ." It's part of the ongoing Intergenerational Multi-Arts Project (IMAP), and it will continue through April 11. The opening also takes place during the Third Ward's Gallery Night And Day.
“It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.”
--Pablo Picasso
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