Elevate Eldercare

In an eldercare field that's populated with unseen and unsung heroes, family members of people living with dementia can often feel the most isolated and underrepresented.

In the Greater Manchester area of the United Kingdom, Empowered Conversations creates safe, brave spaces for small cohorts of people on the caregiving journey to take a step away from their day-to-day stresses and struggles. By providing new skills and a non-judgmental forum for caregivers to openly sharetheir emotions, the program brings real benefits for both caregivers and people living with dementia alike.

Empowered Conversations project manager Emma Smith joins the podcast to discuss the program, share some best practices, and encourage family caregivers to care for themselves as much as they do for their loved ones.

Learn more about Empowered Conversations: https://empowered-conversations.co.uk/

Explore an entire library of free resources for family caregivers on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/theempoweredconversationsapproach

Far too often, people – even well-meaning folks who work in the field – fail to see nursing home residents as humans capable of the same growth, creativity, and fulfillment as people living in private homes. In fact, this ageism and ableism is a major reason why our imagination around reforming communal care settings is so narrowly focused on individual health metrics, and not overall wellbeing.

Andres "Jay" Molina is living proof that one's life as a productive, curious human doesn't end upon moving into a nursing home. Since coming to New York City's Coler nursing community at age 35 after a significant health emergency, Jay has become an advocate for people living with disabilities; a self-taught animator; a poet and storyteller; and the co-director of "Fire Through Dry Grass," a gripping documentary about the experience of Coler residents during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Tune in to hear Jay's perspectives on how nursing homes must change to meet the spiritual, emotional, and creative needs of residents – and how they can better support residents' innate desire to contribute to the community.

Watch "Fire Through Dry Grass": https://www.pbs.org/pov/films/firethroughdrygrass/

Learn about OPEN DOORS, the Reality Poets, and the Nursing Home Lives Matter movement:https://www.opendoorsnyc.org/

Hear Jay tell his personal story: https://www.opendoorsnyc.org/blogs/realitypoets-jay

As eldercare CEOs and women of color, Anita Holt and Frances Salinas are relative rarities in a sector that's supposed to serve people of all races and backgrounds equally.

They join the podcast this week to discuss their work at their respective communities – Holt at The Forest at Duke in Durham, N.C. and Salinas at Wesley Willows in Rockford, Ill. – and the various ways that emphasizing diversity has improved both care and the workforce.

Holt and Salinas remind us that diversity is about ensuring that people of all genders, races, sexual orientations, and ethnic backgrounds feel welcome and respected at all levels of an eldercare organization, from the boardroom to resident rooms. It's also about welcoming a diversity of perspectives, breaking free from the traditional sources of power and influence in both non-profit and for-profit organizations to build the types of settings that truly reflect the communities they serve.

Learn more about The Forest at Duke: https://forestduke.org/

Learn about Wesley Willows: https://www.wesleywillows.org/

Revisiting the Teaching Nursing Home was designed to pair Pennsylvania nursing homes with area schools of nursing, introducing up-and-coming nurses to careers in eldercare while also infusing age-friendly care practices into the communities' operations.

But according to Nancy Zionts, the primary investigator on the project – as well as the chief operating officer and chief program officer at the Pittsburgh-based Jewish Healthcare Foundation – the program went beyond the clinical, bringing an energy and enthusiasm to the participating nursing homes that had been sorely lacking during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Zionts joins the podcast to discuss the program's successes, its future expansion plans, and the ongoing benefits of collaborations between students and professionals in geriatrics.

Read an overview of the project from the John A. Hartford Foundation, one of its primary funders: https://www.johnahartford.org/grants-strategy/revisiting-the-teaching-nursing-home

Learn about the four M's of age-friendly eldercare: https://www.agefriendlycare.psu.edu/the-4ms-explained

Visit the Pennsylvania Teaching Nursing Homes Collaborative website, available in late January: http://ptnhc.org/

Robert Kramer – the founder of think tank Nexus Insights, as well as the co-founder and former CEO of the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care (NIC) – returns to "Elevate Eldercare" for another stimulating discussion on the big-picture future of eldercare.

As providers and advocates focus on the individual issues facing the sector, such as persistent staffing shortages and new regulations, Kramer challenges everyone to think bigger about the types of services and supports that they'd want for themselves one day – and that, more pressingly, the Baby Boom generation will come to expect from an industry that too often remains stuck in a subpar past.

Read about Nexus Insights and its work, including its alliance with the Milken Institute under the Aging Innovation Collaborative banner: https://www.nexusinsights.net/

Learn more about Carehaus, a new intergenerational co-housing project coming to Baltimore:https://www.carehaus.net/

Every December, we use the last "Elevate Eldercare" episode of the year to take stock of the previous 12 months and make some predictions for the year ahead.

CFI logged substantial milestones in 2023: celebrating 20 years of Green House homes, taking the modelinternational with the opening of new homes in Australia, further integrating the GHP and Pioneer Network communities, and gathering the entire eldercare reform movement together in Pittsburgh for amemorable annual conference.

But our work is far from done. Join CFI CEO Susan Ryan, chief learning officer Marla DeVries, director of network and community relations Stacey Bergmann, and director of communications Alex Spanko for a roundtable discussion of the highlights and hardships that defined the eldercare sector in 2023 – as well as our hopes for a prosperous and more empowering 2024 for elders and people with disabilities everywhere.

Contact Stacey Bergmann to get involved with the Green House and Pioneer Network communities:[email protected]

Explore EmpowerED, our new eLearning and consulting platform: https://empoweredcfi.getlearnworlds.com/

Travel through 20 years of Green House history: https://thegreenhouseproject.org/20for20/

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine shook the eldercare world in April 2022 with a scathing report on the nation's broken nursing home system.

Less than two years later, the Moving Forward Nursing Home Quality Coalition – formed in the wake of the NASEM report to operationalize its conclusions – has made substantial progress in addressing various quality improvement goals.

This week, we check back in with coalition chair Alice Bonner and director Isaac Longobardi to see what progress has been made so far, where they have the most optimism about reform for the future, and how people from across the eldercare spectrum can still get involved.

Read about the Moving Forward Coalition and its work: https://movingforwardcoalition.org/

Learn more about HRSA's latest workforce grant: https://www.hrsa.gov/grants/find-funding/HRSA-24-018

As we navigate a holiday season set against the backdrop of global and domestic conflict, this 2021 interview with Dr. Edith Eger feels even more vital than ever.

A psychologist and a Holocaust survivor, Dr. Eger has 96 years of direct experience with navigating troubled times – both for herself and in service of others – and her ability to find light in the darkness remains deeply inspiring. After enduring unimaginable cruelty as a Jewish teenager in Europe during World War II, she dedicated her life to helping people process and overcome their own traumas.

This holiday, we could all use a dose of Dr. Eger's wisdom – including her calls for us to focus on ourselves when the world seems out of control, because we all only have this life to live. By being the best versions of ourselves that we can be, Dr. Eger asserts, we can find stability and happiness in a world that's always changing, and not always for the better.

Learn more about Dr. Eger's life, books, and philosophy: https://dreditheger.com/

Learn more about the Center for Innovation: www.thegreenhouseproject.org

It's easy to forget that not all nursing home residents are elders – and Vincent Pierce is dedicated to making sure leaders, advocates, and the general public remember.

Pierce, a resident of the Coler nursing community on Roosevelt Island in New York City, wears many hats. He's the founder of Nursing Home Lives Matter, an advocacy group formed during the yearlong COVID lockdown that robbed him and his fellow Coler residents of connection and convivium. He's a poet, musician, and music producer. He's the director of OPEN DOORS, an organization that uses art to connect and empower Black and brown people living with disabilities – especially those who, like him, fell victim to gun violence – and inspire young people to pursue their dreams.

And most recently, he's one of the subjects of "Fire Through Dry Grass," a powerful documentary that takes viewers inside Coler during the worst of the pandemic – and challenges viewers to fight for the rights of nursing home residents, no matter their age or condition.

Learn more about Nursing Home Lives Matter: https://www.opendoorsnyc.org/nhlm

Explore the work of OPEN DOORS: https://www.opendoorsnyc.org/

Stream "Fire Through Dry Grass" via PBS: https://www.pbs.org/pov/films/firethroughdrygrass/

"Unpretentious" isn't a word you see often in marketing materials for senior living communities, but it shows up several times in the description of Northaven Senior Living in Seattle.

Darlene Storti, Northaven's executive director, joins "Elevate Eldercare" to discuss this down-to-earth assisted and independent living community for lower- and moderate-income elders – as well as the organization's plans to open the Nook, which will feature workforce housing with on-site early childhood care and education services for up to 100 kids.

It's all part of Storti's vision to desegregate and destigmatize growing older for people of all ages, a mission grounded in her experience working with both elders and teenagers alike.

Learn more about Northaven and the Nook: http://northavenseniorliving.org/news/2023/the-nook-is-coming

Register for a December 7 webinar that will explore how a small Medicaid rate boost can spur development of person-centered alternatives to traditional nursing homes:

https://thegreenhouseproject.org/projects/change-the-incentives-change-the-system-a-green-house-medicaid-case-study/