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July 29, 2014
Free Advocacy Skills Training for Advocates in the Arlington, VA Area!
The Consumer Voice is offering a FREE state-based, in-person advocacy skills training on Tuesday, August 26th at the Hilton Crystal City at Washington Reagan National Airport. We welcome long-term care ombudsmen, consumer advocates, family members, caregivers, consumer alliances, disability groups, and community and senior organizations. This will be an all day training from 9:30 am - 4:30 pm. A free lunch will be provided.
You must register to participate in this FREE training. Registration is limited, so make sure to register today. If you are interested in attending or have any questions, please contact Amanda Celentano, Program and Research Associate, at acelentano@theconsumervoice.org or at 202-332-2275 ext 204.
We hope you can join us in August!
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Resident's Voice Submissions Due This Friday
Residents' Rights Month is an annual event designated by the Consumer Voice and is celebrated in October to honor residents living in all long-term care facilities, including nursing homes, sub acute units, assisted living, board and care and retirement communities. It is a time for celebration and recognition offering an opportunity for every facility to focus on and celebrate awareness of dignity, respect and the value of each individual resident. The theme for Residents' Rights Month 2014 is, "Better Staffing: The Key to Better Care" with the goal of encouraging residents and others to be educated about staffing and long-term care.
The Resident’s Voice is an opportunity for residents from facilities across the country to share their ideas about this year’s Residents’ Rights Month theme with other residents, ombudsmen, families, community members and nursing home staff.
Residents are encouraged to think about and respond to the following questions:
- Why are adequate staffing levels in nursing homes important to you?
- Describe a time when a staff person has gone out of their way to help you or made you feel special.
- Describe a time when you raised a concern about staffing at your facility and your voice was heard.
- What do you think should be done to ensure there is enough staff to provide good care to residents in all nursing homes?
Residents can respond to the questions in writing (poems, stories), through art of any kind or with videos/recordings. We encourage facilities/families to frame resident entries and hang them in residents’ rooms or other areas of the facility.
Plus, we will be creating a calendar in honor of this year’s theme! Send us photos of residents and staff along with quotes from the residents about what the staff members mean to them, and we may include your picture in our calendar for sale during Residents’ Rights Month!
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Send entries to info@theconsumervoice.org.
All submissions are due August 1, 2014.
For more information about the Resident's Voice Challenge and Residents' Rights Month, visit our website.
Does your organization have events planned to celebrate 2014 Residents' Rights Month? Send us information on your event to info@theconsumervoice.org, and we will post it on our website.
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Tips from NSCLC on State Transition Plans for New Medicaid HCBS Regulations
States now are beginning to release their transition plans to bring their Medicaid home and community-based services (HCBS) systems into compliance with the new federal regulations on community-based settings. It is essential that consumers and their representatives be prepared to evaluate those plans and advocate for improvements.
The National Senior Citizens Law Center provided four tips for consumer advocates:
- Don’t confuse a work plan with a transition plan.
- Don’t accept a state’s unsupported claims of compliance.
- Don’t accept inordinate reliance on providers’ self-reported data.
- Compliance should not be seen as a one-time event.
These tips are explained in more detail here.
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2015 White House Conference on Aging
The Acting Director of the Office of Public Affairs and Communications (OPAC) in the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) will be leaving ONC to become the Executive Director of the White House Conference on Aging. White House Conferences on Aging are held every 10 years to engage with and hear from stakeholders and individuals interested in aging about issues and areas important to older individuals and people in the field of aging.
The 2014 White House Conference on Aging will cover four main topic areas: 1.) elder justice; 2) long-term services & supports; 3) retirement security; and 4) healthy aging. According to a recent White House Blog, "The 2014 White House Conference on Aging is an opportunity to look ahead to the issues that will help shape the landscape for older Americans for the next decade." For more information, read the White House Blog.
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Assisted Living Toolkit Available
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the national Center for Excellence in Assisted Living (CEAL) developed the Toolkit for Person-Centeredness in Assisted Living. The toolkit can be downloaded for free and includes questionnaires to be completed by assisted living residents and staff, to help assised living providers benchmark and monitor their person-centered practices, and simple, easy-to-follow instructions for scoring and interpreting the results. The questionnaires measure Person-Centered Practices in Assisted Living and are called the PC-PAL. The PC-PAL and Toolkit are available at http://www.shepscenter.unc.edu and http://www.theceal.org.
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In this Issue
Free Advocacy Skills Training for Advocates in the Arlington, VA Area!
Resident's Voice Submissions Due This Friday
Tips from NSCLC for State Transition Plans for New Medicaid HCBS Regulations
2015 White House Conference on Aging
Assisted Living Toolkit Available
4.1 It CAN Be Done!
As part of our newly launched nursing home staffing campaign, Better Staffing: The Key to Better Care, Consumer Voice is advocating for a minimum of 4.1 hours of nursing care per resident per day. To show your support of this campaign, individuals can send us a photo with the slogan "4.1 - It CAN Be Done" by tweeting us pictures @ConsumerVoices, posting on our Facebook or emailing your photos to info@theconsumervoice.org. Get the word out and encourage consumers to participate by sending in their photos too!
You can join the Better Staffing: The Key to Better Care campaign, learn more about the campaign's goals, access the campaign advocacy toolkit, and take action at: www.theconsumervoice.org/betterstaffing
Most recent supporters:
Christopher Bradley, AAA of West Central Texas
Heather Armstrong, Alamo AAA
Tonia Alexander, AAA of Ark-Tex
Suzanna Sulfstede, Dallas County LTCOP, The Senior Source
Ellen Blair, AAA of the Capital Area
Eileen Coyle, TX Department of Insurance
Patty Ducayet, State LTCO, Texas
Suzanna Sulfstede, Dallas County LTCOP, The Senior Source
Calendar of Events
Wednesday, July 30: Meaningful Consumer Engagement: Training the Consumer, 2:00pm EST, Webinar from CMS with The Lewin Group and Community Catalyst, Register by Friday, July 25th
Thursday, July 31: The Changing Landscape of Assisted Living: Developments in the States, 2:00pm EST, Webinar from the National Senior Citizens Law Center and Assisted Living Consumer Alliance
Friday, August 1: Facebook First Friday, Topic: Resident to resident altercations
Friday, August 1: Submissions due for the 2014 Resident's Voice Challenge, Email submissions to info@theconsumervoice.org
Tuesday, August 26: Free Advocacy Skills Training, 9:30am - 4:30pm, Arlington, VA, Consumer Voice's free state-based, in-person advocacy skills training; Register by contacting acelentano@theconsumervoice.org
September 13-18, 2014: National Home & Community Based Services Conference, Arlington, VA
October: 2014 Residents' Rights Month, Better Staffing: The Key to Better Care
Monday, October 20: Discussing POLST with Persons with Early Alzheimer's Disease, 3:00pm EST, Webinar in yearly series from the National POLST Paradigm
November 15-18, 2014: Consumer Voice Annual Conference at the Hilton Crystal City in Arlington, VA Register now.
Provide a Scholarship to the Consumer Voice Annual Conference
Many advocates are not able to afford to attend the Consumer Voice Annual Conference to experience the best speakers in the field, opportunities to network with colleagues and time to interact directly with long-term care consumers. This year, we have created a special giving opportunity for Scholarships. If you are able, please give as many scholarships as you can. We would be delighted to obtain support for an additional 50 people. Provide a scholarship by making a donation of $295 x the number of scholarships you would like to give. Contributors to the Consumer Voice Annual Conference receive many benefits. For more information about contributing to the conference, click here.
Join the conversation and follow us on social media!
Last Week's Most Popular Post:
Monday, July 21:
Seeking Assisted Living Contracts, More info
Last Week's Most Popular Tweet:
Saturday, July 26:
#Caregiver guilt: what if we don't find or make time to visit LTC family members on the weekend?
Long-Term Care Resources & News
Read past issues of The Gazette here.
Sponsor the Gazette - Consumer Voice is now accepting sponsorship for each weekly issue of The Gazette. As a benefit of sponsorship, the contributor may honor, remember, or thank an individual or organization. For more information, contact Richard Gelula at rgelula@theconsumervoice.org
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