ChangingAging.org

The always insightful Dorothea Johnson reviews Al Power’s new book…

I’ll add my comment to the bottom of the post.

Dear Dr. Power,

Your book is truly superb – it covers a lot of ground by incorporating best practices from the most relevant literature out there along with your incredibly deep and thoughtful insight. Your story telling and writing skills are a really nice bonus – you should be very proud of your work! “Dementia Beyond Drugs” is transforming people across the country as we speak. I believe that it will have a direct impact on the well-being of the millions of people with dementia who currently live in institutions.

As to the question of how you create training curriculum based on the book, I would suggest that you write two separate modules. The first module should be geared toward leadership and management staff where you use the content of the first half of the book (culture change). The second module should be directed at the care partners and should emphasize the content of the latter half of your book. I say this because I believe that most care partners today are eager to practice person-centered skills but are lacking the safety net of an organizational culture that values and honors this different set of skills.

I recently wrote very similar type of training curriculum for my organization based on the work of the Bradford Dementia Group (Dawn Brooker, Danuta Lapintska, and others). After I presented it to our leadership team, we sat down and began working on changing some specific management systems to match the ideology of an enriched dementia care model. So we actually changed a few of our assessment tools to incorporate these elements. We also worked on I-care plans although these have not materialized quite yet. Anyway, my point is, as you well know, that culture change has to be driven from the top down or else it can not be succesful. Likewise, it has to be embedded in every aspect of the organizational system (policies, procedures, recruitment strategies, job descriptions, reward systems, etc) or else it will fail.

Buy this BOOK!

Here are two somewhat unsettling stories I’ve received in the past week:

Rhonda Rotterman reports that her recently-delivered US census form states: “Do not count anyone living in a nursing home, jail, prison, or detention facility.” She finds the grouping disturbing (as do I).

Kim McRae noted the following article in which the RI Veteran’s Home is addressing its survey deficiencies by hiring the head of the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility as the new Administrator. That should get ‘em in line…

Everybody’s got problems.

Even the Finn’s.

This is a nice mashup of complaints about daily life and choral music.

The navel gazing continues…

MIDDLE BOOMERS: A SEPARATE DEMOGRAPHIC GROUP; NEW METLIFE STUDY EXAMINES DIFFERENCES AMONG THE BABY BOOMERS
For decades, American Baby Boomers have been characterized as a bloc of people who think and act as one monolithic generation. However, recent data from the MetLife Mature Market Institute, show that Young, Middle and Older Boomers grew up during disparate “eras” and are now at different stages in their lives. They should, perhaps, be treated as separate demographic groups.

“The Middle Boomers, now 52 to 58 years old and 29 million strong, are very much a generation of the 60s,” said Sandra Timmermann, Ed.D., director of the MetLife Mature Market Institute. “They identify with the Vietnam War, the Kennedy assassination and the women’s movement, identifying the war as the event that most influenced them in their youth. They are distinguished most by a change in culture through political and social activism. But, like the proverbial often neglected ‘middle child,’ they have rarely been noted as having an identity of their own, although they are different in many ways from the Oldest and Youngest Boomers.”

Get the whole study here.

(H/T Steve Gurney)

All right loyal Changingaging readers, you’ve been slogging through posts on municipal water systems, universal design and ageism in Australia. Today, I make a peace offering.

Tomorrow— telomere shortening!*

* Just kidding

Every once in a while, someone sends me something so cool that I can not resist sharing it.

This is one of those times.

“50 to Death” is a web-based “television” series that explores the lives of three 50 plus Manhattan-ites who are doing their best to deal with what life is bringing their way.

Complications ensue.

I love the fact that these folks are writing, acting in, and producing stories which are compelling and funny.

The show’s web site is HERE

The 50todeath Cast

I am hoping that some Changingaging readers will explore the site, watch some episodes and drop some comments on this post.

It’s things like this that remind me how poorly a society function when no voices are raised on behalf of those who will follow us onto this earth.

Forget the seventh generation, how about the second generation?

The distortion of the human lifecycle– the massive adult fixation on the here and now– plays out in thousands of different way and yet remains, almost entirely, absent from public debate.

State and federal studies indicate that thousands of water and sewer systems may be too old to function properly.

For decades, these systems — some built around the time of the Civil War — have been ignored by politicians and residents accustomed to paying almost nothing for water delivery and sewage removal. And so each year, hundreds of thousands of ruptures damage streets and homes and cause dangerous pollutants to seep into drinking water supplies.

Mr. Hawkins’s answer to such problems will not please a lot of citizens. Like many of his counterparts in cities like Detroit, Cincinnati, Atlanta and elsewhere, his job is partly to persuade the public to accept higher water rates, so that the utility can replace more antiquated pipes.

“People pay more for their cellphones and cable television than for water,” said Mr. Hawkins, who before taking over Washington’s water system ran environmental groups and attended Princeton and Harvard, where he never thought he would end up running a sewer system.

“You can go a day without a phone or TV,” he added. “You can’t go a day without water.”

Keep Reading

Alex Mawhinney sends this link along.

Good stuff

Builders are doing an admirable job of incorporating universal design features in new homes, but baby boomers continue to be slow in accepting the need for them.
Perhaps you know the type – people who do not want to accept the fact that they will eventually get old.
“I think universal design features can be likened to the first cell phones,” said John Migliaccio, director of research at MetLife’s Mature Market Institute. “At first, very few people used them. Now they are ubiquitous. In fact, every kid has one. Consumers haven’t really gotten the message on universal design, but we feel they will.”
The slow acceptance is not unlike the responses to environmentally friendly homes. For example, only 12 percent of respondents to a Metlife survey said they would pay more for a “green” home. The same folks are willing to pay an average one-time amount of $6,732 if it would save $1,000 annually in utility costs. While 23 percent of respondents said they are concerned about the environment, it does not drive their decision to buy.
The educational push by builders, architects and designers is to remove the “old” association from universal design, or UD. The universal design approach advocates that all built environments be accessible to people regardless of age, size or physical ability, and the features of these environments be compelling and appear seamless to the design of the home. These amenities and alternations can serve all ages, hence the name “universal design.”

Keep on Reading

I have a thing for spontaneity and “Hey Jude”

This clip show some buskers playing for a large crowd in the Times Square subway station.

At first, the singing seems pretty kind of muddy and indistinct, keep watching.

The audience really finds its voice.

Beautiful.

Hey Jude Times Square Subway Station from 39forks on Vimeo.

A collaboration between Nazareth College and St. John’s in Rochester has just won the Sigma Phi Omega Service Project Award for innovation in undergraduate education.

David Steitz, PhD, teaches an upper level psychology course called “Issues in Aging”. On most campuses this would simply be a class of young adults, taught by a middle-aged professor. But this course has added a new dimension. The 22 undergraduate students hold their class at St. John’s Meadows, our independent living campus, and 13 elders from the Meadows attend the weekly class as well. This idea was supported by a local consortium of academia and local business leaders, in order to create connections between elders, students and business organizations.

The course description states that “elders have gained wisdom through their life-long experience. They continue to learn, grow and provide insight to future generations.” One of the elders, Aaron Braveman, relates that “we not only have the opportunity to share our views on aging issues, but we also get the perspective of the Nazareth students.” Professor Steitz adds, “The St. John’s class has been an amazing experience. The seniors have a special enthusiasm and openness.

They clearly have things to say and they want to be heard. People are comfortable. It is the perfect environment. This is what teaching is all about.” It’s also a far cry from the views expressed in the recent post, “The Weight”…