Culture Change
Eden Alternative on Alzheimer’s Speaks Radio
The Eden Alternative family knows Laura Beck as the Learning and Development Guide who helped pioneer Eden at Home, which applies the 10 principles of the Eden Alternative to home and community-based care.
Last Friday Laura was featured on Alzheimer’s Speaks Radio with Lori La Bey where she discussed her personal journey as the daughter of an elder living with dementia and her discovery of person-directed care through the Eden Alternative.
Full Story »Culture Change Comes to Arkansas
The state of Arkansas is taking a leadership role in the culture change movement with an innovative program designed to bring the best concepts from the Eden Alternative, Green House Project and Pioneer Network and other culture change philosophies to nursing homes across the state.
In partnership with the state’s Office of Long Term Care and the Arkansas Health Care Association, the Arkansas Foundation for Medical Care’s Arkansas Innovative Performance Program (AIPP) has entered its second year working with 10 nursing homes and one assisted living facility in an intensive culture change program.
Full Story »The Impact of Music on Memory and Language
By Barbara Speedling, Quality of Life Specialist, Director of Quality of Life Service for Healthcare Compliance Group, LLC Who can deny that music makes you feel good? For most of us, the right melody with the right rhythm sends us into a frenzy of toe-tapping, hand-clapping, hip-shaking glee! While every kind of music won’t elicit the [...]
Changing Aging in the Granite State
ChangingAging.org is proud to lend its name and support to the New Hampshire Public Television series CHANGING AGING IN THE GRANITE STATE funded by AARP New Hampshire and focused on four key issues facing older adults: financial security, health care planning for the long term, consumer and investment fraud, and living well.
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Developer talks about the future of long-term care
Allan R. Brown, Jr., is co-founder and principal of Prevarian Senior Living , a relatively new real estate development and investment firm based in Dallas. (The company just broke ground on its first assisted living facility this past May.) In th…
Full Story »Losing Our Optimistic Outlook in an Age of Change
Read Cockeyed Optimists in a Crybaby Culture, a post by Robert Stein on his blog, Connecting the Dots. Using the wonderful old Rogers and Hammerstein South Pacific song, I’m a Cockeyed Optimist as a metaphor, Stein looks at the way our American c…
Full Story »First Community Initiated Green House Homes!
In a first for THE GREEN HOUSE ® Project (at least that we know of), resident research contributes to the adoption of The Green House model: [Excerpts from The Thursday Flyer, a weekly newsletter of the residents of John Knox … Continue reading →
Full Story »When this resident loses her cool
Even though I try to always be cordial to the aides and nurses, I know there are times when I fall short. Nursing homes are mini bureaucracies and every decision has to go through some type of red tape. This whole situation drives me crazy. For instanc…
Full Story »Life Gets Better
More from the ChangingAging book of the year—- Life Gets Better. Several years ago, Wendy Lustbader, a former social worker, and her husband were on a bus in New Zealand. She says they were, by far, the oldest people on the bus, with most of their fellow travelers being in the late teens or [...]
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Time To Redefine ‘Wellness’ in Aging Services
One of my recent manifestos on what ‘changing aging’ means inspired an interesting blog post at LeadingAge. LeadingAge is very interested in using its clout to influence how the caregiving industry views the concept of “wellness” in long term care. They have set out to create a new definition of “Wellness” that promotes the idea that older adults can remain fully engaged “in living throughout their lives — regardless of real or perceived barriers.”
Full Story »The Caregiver Boom
An interesting piece of news arrives telling me that the number of caregivers in California is set to double. One of the problems associated with this boom it that many of these soon-to-be caregivers are themselves facing the prospect of an “unhealthy future due to higher rates of poor health behaviors, compared with both non-caregivers in the same age range and older caregivers.”
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Announcing The Inaugural Poetics of Aging Conference
San Francisco-based AgeSong Institute has organized a grassroots gathering of pro-aging performing artists, directors, writers and advocates for the inaugural Poetics of Aging conference Nov. 16-19, 2011, to celebrate and explore elderhood and aging as the basis for depth and wisdom. The mission of the conference is to counter the belief that aging is decline and/or disease and to promote a new understanding of old age as a time of growth and potential, not in spite of living longer, but because of it.
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High Times
File this story under “Not Exactly a Surprise.” MIAMI — In her 88 years, Florence Siegel has learned how to relax: A glass of red wine. A crisp copy of The New York Times, if she can wrest it from her husband. Some classical music, preferably Bach. And every night like clockwork, she lifts a pipe to her lips and smokes marijuana.
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NIC’s Kramer addresses seniors housing with unbridled sense of urgency
Bob Kramer wants to know: Are you ready to ride the wave? No, not that fast-becoming-a-cliché silver tsunami, although that has something to do with it. Kramer is rather more interested in how long-term care and senior housing operators are prepar…
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Assessing Organizational Well-Being on the Journey
Receiving constructive feedback is an important ingredient in our personal growth process. We seek feedback out for ourselves and we share feedback with those we are close to. We also search for ways to determine how our growth compares to our peers. The same is true for organizations. Organizations grow based on the feedback they [...]
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The Politics of Aging
The aging of the post-war generation is not a surprise. For decades pundits have warned of a coming intergenerational conflict pitting the needs of aging boomers against younger generations. I was just interviewed on the “Politics of Aging” in regards to my upcoming participation in a panel discussion on the same topic at the Poetics [...]
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Try these 3 programs to increase Medicare census and reimbursement
October 1st is looming. That dreaded date, what with its Medicare cuts, is causing facilities to scramble and evaluate budget savings and other measures to maintain bottom line performance. While cutting costs is one way to respond to the loss in…
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Does your facility tell a story? It might have to, if you want to survive
Daniel Pink , in his opening keynote address at the American Health Care Association / National Center for Assisted Living ’s 62 nd Annual Convention & Expo in Las Vegas , stated that “design” was going to be an important consideratio…
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Changes to Life Safety Code
The Green House Project is excited to report that the Pioneer Network/Rothschild Regulatory Task Force’s life safety code revision recommendations submitted to the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) have been approved and will be incorporated into the 2012 edition of … Continue reading →
Full Story »The Hippie Index
I am putting together an “Index” of the top/most important/influential Hippie culture books, people and places. Not ranked in any particular in order,here is what I have so far…. Be Here Now is one of the first guides, for those not born as Hindus, to becoming a yogi, by a person himself not born a [...]
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