Help for the working, care-giving mother

A new poll, commissioned by Workplace Options© in conjunction with the Alzheimer’s Association®, shows that more than one in seven American workers (15 percent) are active or former caregivers for someone with Alzheimer’s or another form of dementia. Among those, fewer than half (47 percent) were able to maintain employment while providing care.

The national poll [http://www.workplaceoptions.com/pdf/polls/AlzheimersSurveyResults.pdf] also provides updated information regarding the strain that caregiving puts on individuals and families from an emotional and financial perspective including:

• 69 percent of caregivers said that caring for someone with Alzheimer’s disease or dementia strained their family finances.
• 90 percent characterized their caregiving as emotionally stressful.

According to additional statistics, 62 percent of caregivers for those affected by Alzheimer’s disease or dementia are women. Caregiving by itself is a difficult task but between balancing family, career and now, more often, their parents, the average caregiver can begin to feel overwhelmed and be unsure of where to turn.

In the last few years, a new generation of caregiver has emerged, creating the “Sandwich Generation”. This term is coined by those who are caring for aging parents and young children (under the age of 18) at the same time. For this caregiver, the challenges require more balance between work and family time. The 2012 report, “Women and Alzheimer’s disease; The Caregiver’s Crisis” [http://www.wmmsurveys.com/ALZ_report.pdf], identified one-third of all caregivers fitting into this category.

To honor working mothers and other caregivers, the Alzheimer’s Association provides many resources to help assist them. Please visit www.alz.org/care to learn more.

2012 Award Winners Announced

Each year we bring our team leaders to Hutchinson for an educational conference.  During our winter conference, we announce those who won awards during the previous year.

Last night, we announced the winners of the 2012 awards.

 

*Pictured above, L to R: Dean Bloemke, President and Roman Bloemke, Director of Operations

Our first award announced was for the Resident Choice Award.  This award goes to the community who achieved the highest score during our annual resident satisfaction surveys.  The 2012 Resident Choice award was given to Excelsior Place Assisted Living in Baxter, Minnesota.

As their Director of Resident Services, Loree Besser, accepted the award, she gave all of the credit to her team.  ”This year, like many, presents each of us with challenges.  All of the credit for this award goes to my team back at Excelsior Place.  Without a solid foundation, you have nothing.  The team that I work with is absolutely phenomenal and we couldn’t have done this without them.”

Our next award presented last night was the Great Places to Work award.  This award is presented to the communities who achieve a high satisfaction level.  This year’s award winner was River Pointe of Moorhead.

While accepting the award, Ron Bervig, Director of Resident Services gave credit to the team in place at River Pointe, commending them on doing a great job.  ”I really have to thank the staff for the wonderful job they do every day.  They are what makes us successful!”

Our next award goes to communities who have reached a list of achievements and have a high level of excellence in senior living. Criteria for the award include employment best practices and employee satisfaction, resident and family satisfaction, resident and staff safety, financial performance, matching resident needs to care plans throughout a resident’s stay, and overall occupancy.  Each of the performance objectives is to assure the proper and desired level of service is provided.

The 2012 Best Community Awards go to:

Orchard Hill Assisted Living – New Ulm, Minnesota.

Potter Ridge Assisted Living – Red Wing, Minnesota.

Excelsior Place Assisted Living – Baxter, Minnesota

River Pointe of Moorhead – Moorhead, Minnesota

Our final award of the night was the North Star Leadership Award.  This award goes to the person who was nominated by their peers and residents who live in the community.

The 2012 North Star Leadership Award goes to Paulla Perry from Thomas Landing Senior Living, in Rice Lake, Wisconsin.

Paulla was unaware that she had been nominated, so the surprise on her face was great to see when it was announced that she had won.  Paulla thanked each of her peers and the resident’s back at Thomas Landing for making her job a joy to be a part of.  ”I’m at a loss as to what to say.  I need to say thank you to everyone at Thomas Landing for being such a great team to work with.  It’s because of them that it is a joy to go to work everyday.”

Congratulations to all of our award winners!

You continue to inspire us and others to do great work. Thank you for everything you do!

Twin Town Villa expansion almost complete!

It seems like yesterday when we made the announcement that Twin Town Villa was expanding their community.  Where does the time go?

For those that drive by every day, you’ve seen our progress and have probably been wondering “when are we going to see then inside?”.  Well, that day is coming quickly for us.

As we sit today, our plan is to open in mid-February.  We don’t have a specific target date yet, but that will be coming in the next two weeks.  

Right now, we are beginning our process of hiring new team members to work in our memory care community.  If you are a dedicated, caring individual, who has worked with someone with memory loss, we would love to hear from you!  Contact Lisa, Director of Resident Services at (218) 643-9542.

We are very excited to welcome back to our company April Thompson as our Lead Care Manager in the memory care community.  April had previously worked with Welcome Home Health Care in another community in Alexandria.  April is a solid leader and we are excited to have her on our team.

As a side note, Twin Town Villa now has two former North Star Leadership Award winners working in Breckenridge.  April won the award in 2010, and Judi Durkin, Lead Care Manager in the assisted living community won in 2011!  What a solid team!

We have very excited about our new expansion project.  We’ll release more details as we get closer to our opening date.  Also look for the Grand Opening to happen in early March 2013.

For more information or to schedule your personal introduction to our community, contact Lisa at (218) 643-9542 or visit their website at http://wtohdevelopment.com/Breckenridge.htm

 

 

Orchard Hill gets ready to celebrate love

Orchard Hill Assisted Living Community is proud to present 9 of our 10 married couples with a combination of 477 years of blissful happiness! We will honor these couples with a romantic Valentine’s Day dinner with music and wine on February 14!

Ground breaking ceremony held at Twin Town Villa

On Wednesday, July 25th, Twin Town Villa held their ground breaking ceremony for their new expansion project.

 

Several community members attended the event.  It was fun to see everyone get excited about what the project is going to bring to Breckenridge.

 

We had the official ground breaking ceremony.

 

We even had some residents and staff come outside to participate.  From the look on their faces, they seemed to be extremely excited for what’s to come.The equipment is all lined up and ready to start moving ground.

As we mentioned in yesterday’s blog post, this is a $3.5 million dollar expansion to Twin Town Villa and will bring additional assisted living apartments and a memory care community.

We expect to hire an additional 12-15 new positions to work in the community.  Over time, we expect that additional positions could be added based on level of care needed.

Welcome Home operates 7 senior living communities in Minnesota and Wisconsin. We’ve been providing a warm, homelike atmosphere for resident to call home since 1994 in many different states. Our goal is to focus on the individual residents needs. Over the past several years, we’ve seen and heard from residents and family members to add more service options. By adding these programs to our community, it gives older adults more options for their care and life experiences.

As we age, we want to live in a place that is fun, eat great food, and have our needs cared for.  We believe that adding this community, with the additional common areas such as the movie theater, additional apartments and care programs, gives our residents and their families what they’ve been looking for.

For more information about Twin Town Villa or Welcome Home Management, please visit our website at www.wtohdevelopment.com.  You can get an “inside look” in to the daily lives of our residents by visiting all of our communities Facebook pages.  A link to those can be found on our website as well.

 

Dayton to agree to June 30th GOP offer?

In what some may call a surprising move, Governor Mark Dayton has tenatively agreed to the GOP budget plan that was introduced on June 30th.

Gov. Dayton stated: ”Despite my serious reservations about your plan, I have concluded that continuing the state government shutdown would be even more destructive for too many Minnesotans,” Dayton wrote to legislative leaders. “Therefore I am willing to agree to something I do not agree with – your proposal — in order to spare our citizens and our state from further damage.”

While nothing is final yet, we are very interested to see how this potential agreement plays out for older adults and older adult service providers across the state.

Star Tribune article with the letter Gov. Dayton sent to GOP leaders this morning.

State shutdown looming

As this week draws to a close, there is a real concern about how the pending state shutdown will affect residents who utilize the state’s Medicaid system known as Elderly Waiver.

The Governor and legislative leaders are at loggerheads over resolving the state budget deficit.  A government shutdown will become necessary if lawmakers do not reach an agreement on the budget before July 1st.  In a shutdown scenario, only essential services, those government activities that are found to be critical to life, health and safety of Minnesotans, would continue.  The determination about which services are “essential” is an issue that will be left to the courts to decide.

Aging Services of Minnesota is actively working to ensure that essential services are defined to include payments necessary to fund Medical Assistance program services, including payments to care centers and Elderly Waiver providers.  To that end, Aging Services staff and members met with Attorney General Lori Swanson today to make our case that Medical Assistance payments should continue during a government shutdown.

The meeting with the Attorney General was secured through close connections between the Attorney General and Aging Services’ legislative counsel.  In addition to Aging Services’ staff, several of our members attended the meeting, including:  Bob Dahl, President/CEO of Elim Care; John Huhn, COO, Walker Methodist; John Tschida, Vice President of Public Affairs and Research, Courage Center; Sarah Work, Director of Administration, Welcome Home Management Company; Annette Greely, Director of Assisted Living, Guardian Angels; Shirley Barnes, CEO, Crest View Senior Communities and Wayne Olson, Senior Vice President of Healthcare, Volunteers of America.

HHS Budget Conference Committee Proposes Drastic Cuts to Elderly Waiver Program

Wanted to share this from Aging Services of Minnesota:

Last week the Health and Human Services Budget Conference Committee completed “phase one” of their budget process, by completing a conference committee bill. The committee does not plan to close up the bill and immediately send this bill to the Governor. Rather, the intent was to reconcile differences between the House and Senate positions so that they can negotiate a final deal with the Governor. Some items in the bill, if ultimately adopted in negotiations with the Governor, would have major implications for older adult services.

For older adult services, the results are decidedly mixed. The Elderly Waiver program is proposed to take a devastating $32.4 million in cuts. While we knew that the EW program was vulnerable to cuts in this budget bill, this was somewhat of an unexpected move by the conference committee, as it essentially adopted all of the cuts to the EW program proposed by the House and all of the cuts to the EW program proposed by the Senate, making the outcome worse than what was originally in either bill.

Hundreds of Seniors and Caregivers Rock the State Capitol to Urge Lawmakers to Prioritize Funding for Senior Care

Residents and staff from Orchard Hill, Potter Ridge, and Twin Town Villa attend the rally at the state capitol. Photo: Roman Bloemke

Residents and staff from Welcome Home communities gathered with hundreds of seniors, care providers, and long-term care supporters from throughout Minnesota Rallied at the Minnesota state capitol today to urge state legislators to take in to account the shifting state demographics and prioritize the budgets to meet the needs of seniors – the fastest growing segment of the state’s population.

Residents and staff made the trip for the rally and then meet with their legislators from, Orchard Hill in New Ulm, Potter Ridge in Red Wing,  Twin Town Villa in Breckenridge and staff from Welcome Home Health Care attended today’s rally.

The rally included speakers representing seniors, caregivers and legislative leaders, and featured Alive and Kickin’ – a senior rock and roll choir.

“As our elected officials, state legislators are charged with the mission of balancing the state budget,” said Robert Dahl, board chair of Aging Services of Minnesota.  “Yet even in tough economic times, there are values and expectations that need to remain as priorities, and one of these is making sure older adult services are available for vulnerable and elderly Minnesotans.

There is growing concern over jobs that are especially felt in rural communities across the state, where older adult service providers are often among the largest employers in the area.

What we’ll be watching this weekend

This morning I came across a blog post over at CNN that mentioned a television special hosted by Larry King.  It’s called “Unthinkable: the Alzheimer’s Edpidmic”.  It was air on May 1st at 7pm Central.

On Sunday May 1^st, CNN will air the first Larry King special, premiering at 8pm ET/PT and will be titled “Unthinkable: the Alzheimer’s Epidemic.” It’s being called the disease of the 21^st century as an estimated 5.4 million people have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. It is the sixth-leading cause of death across all ages in the United States, but many Americans still do not know much about this illness. The one-hour special will look into Alzheimer’s disease, who gets it and why, the race to find effective treatments and a possible cure.

 

King will be joined by people who have been touched by Alzheimer’s disease and will include interviews with former First Lady Laura Bush and California’s former First Lady and Alzheimer’s activist Maria Shriver; actors Seth Rogen, and  Angie Dickinson; TV host Leeza Gibbons; football star Terrell Owens and  son of President Ronald Reagan, Ron Reagan. Neurosurgeon and CNN chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta will explain what Alzheimer’s is and how this disease affects the human brain.