Student and Emerging Professional Peer Group

My conference started with a peer group, a roundtable discussion of current topics in aging.  The Chicago Bridge was invited to help facilitate the discussion, together with representatives from other cities, including GenPhilly, Legacy from San Francisco, ASA’s Students to Emerging Professionals (STEP) interest group, and ASA’s New Ventures in Leadership program.  The room was packed (standing room only!) with Bridge members, students, and emerging professionals from all over the country and world.  We tackled big questions including finding jobs, making a career change into aging, and linking with peers for those who don’t live in a city with a robust aging network like Chicago has.  We ended by brainstorming new ways ASA can support and connect students and emerging professionals across the nation to each other and to established professionals, both in person and online.

Chicago Bridge Mentorship Program Presentation

Immediately after the peer group, Kristen Pavle and I rushed to give a conference workshop on the Chicago Bridge Mentorship Program.  We explained how the program came to be, shared lessons from the pilot, and described the improvements we’ve made for this second year of the project.  Kristen and I were joined by Phyllis Mitzen, a mentor from last year’s program, who shared her experience and talked broadly about the program’s contribution to the field of aging.  It was an honor to present to an engaged and excited audience (even if they asked some tough questions).

Student and Emerging Professional Reception

On Thursday night, we got the opportunity to relax at the Student and Emerging Professional Reception, generously hosted by ASA and the Social Work Leadership Institute at the New York Academy of Medicine. This was a casual forum for meeting other emerging professionals in the field and reconnecting with friends and colleagues who have relocated to other cities.  This event was especially exciting because it was open to all emerging professionals in the San Francisco area, even those not attending Aging in America, allowing them to benefit from the conference even though they could not attend. Chicago Bridge helped host a similar event at the conference last year with huge success.  After the similar success of this year’s event, I hope this will become a mainstay of the conference.

The Chicago Bridge Member Presentations

I certainly wasn’t the only Chicago Bridge member at the conference.  Our members and supporters presented on numerous topics every day of the conference.  We would love to hear from you if you attended. If you presented, please leave a comment and let us know about your workshop.  If you attended, we’d love to hear about your experience, too.

Special thanks to Arlene Wanetick, Chicago Bridge Blog Editor. And thanks to Dani Robles for sharing your picture with us.

All Careers are Careers in Aging

There will come a time, and that time is soon, when to work will be to work with older adults.  1 in 5 people in the United States will be over 65 by the year 2030.  The ratio of younger workers to workers over 55 will be 2 to 1, compared to 5 to 1 right now.  1 in 5 drivers will be 65 or older.  4 out of 5 of older adults will be homeowners.  By the year 2030 – and sooner – we will all be facing aging issues in the workplace, from plumbers and mechanics to bankers and lawyers to cashiers and consultants.  We will all have careers in aging, whether we encounter it first in others or in ourselves.

Eldercare Workforce Shortage

Yet, despite that, we as a nation face a shortage in trained eldercare workforce.  Geriatrics or gerontology has become a specialty rather than the mainstream, even though older adults will be the mainstream.  At schools of higher education across the nation, a small segment of the student body is choosing to focus on aging over hipper, sexier topics.

But the truth is, when the Baby Boom is here, we will all be working on aging issues, whether we are trained to face them or not.  Our professionals will not know what makes an older adults’ situation special or unique or challenging.  They won’t know about the robust aging network for meeting older adults’ needs.  They won’t know why medications need to be prescribed differently for older patients or why substance abuse can be particularly harmful for this population.  They won’t know how to make the paradigm shift required to treat for comfort rather than cure.  They won’t know unless we move aging from a specialty to a common topic integrated into every class, every training, and every job held in this nation.

Older Adults’ Contributions to Society

When it comes down to it, this is a matter of human rights, and that’s why it matters that we get it right. The United States is a nation built for the young and the mobile, but both youth and mobility are subject to change. Even as we record that change happening through projections and graphs, the evolution of our spaces, our systems, and our stereotypes have not kept pace with the evolution of our aging population.  We are not ready for the reality of aging Boomers, a population redefining what it means to be “old.”

Insufficient preparation and perpetuation of increasingly inaccurate stereotypes build obstacles for all older adults, whether they fit our visions of aging or not.  In a nation where human value is measured in contribution to the bottom line, those perceived as not producing in a traditional sense – the aging – are seen as a drain.  A waste of resources.  But when we measure contribution in relationships and knowledge and hard-earned perspective, we begin to see that older adults never stop giving.  They never stop producing.

Isn’t it time we give back just a portion of what we get from our older population?  Isn’t it time we remove the barriers we’ve inflicted by turning aging into a special interest topic rather than a part of the lifespan integrated into every aspect of daily life? Isn’t it time we recognize that each and every one of us works in the field of aging?  So, with that, I wish everyone – working in the “field of aging” or not – a Happy Careers in Aging Week.

Special thanks to Arlene Wanetick, Chicago Bridge Blog Editor. And thanks to marymuses for sharing your picture with us.

The ABCs of Medicare

Many Chicago Bridge members work with aspects of Medicare every day, but have not been formally trained in the program’s details. Garcia’s explanations of Medicare’s parts cleared up many questions held by the attendees.  The questions asked were as diverse as the audience, which included lawyers, students, nursing home and hospital employees, and community-based service providers and advocates.

Medicare Changes and Controversies

A large portion of the event was spent discussing upcoming Medicare changes associated with health care reform. This included discussion about controversies surrounding Medicare. Attendees engaged in an informative discussion about their experience with the rising rate of fraud and abuse and issues arising for beneficiaries admitted to a hospital under observation status.

Senior Health Insurance Program

Garcia also spoke about Illinois’ efforts to recruit additional volunteer counselors for the Senior Health Insurance Program (http://www.insurance.illinois.gov/ship/). This important program is the main mechanism for providing information and assistance to Medicare beneficiaries in the state. SHIP volunteers help beneficiaries understand the parts of Medicare, select the right Medicare supplement or Part D plan for their needs, and secure additional assistance through special programs like Illinois Cares Rx. For more information, visit www.illinoisbenefits.org/.

This article was edited by Arlene Wanetick. Thank you golbenge (골뱅이)’s photostream for providing this wonderful picture.

This seems like a big statement: “The Chicago Bridge Mentorship Program made a meaningful contribution.” But it’s one we believe to be true. We’ve seen evidence of this through formal evaluations completed by Mentors and Mentees, through a forum discussion at an end-of-the-program brunch in November 2010, and through the achievements of Mentees since joining the program. We’ve heard encouraging stories of how Mentees feel more prepared and supported, how Mentors feel a connection to the next generation of aging leaders, and how programs and services for Chicago’s older adults have been strengthened because of the program.

A Mentor summarized this best: “It was gratifying to be able to introduce my Mentee to my colleagues…and to feel that I was helping a really talented professional join the community of senior service providers in Chicago.”

When Mentees Feel Prepared and Supported

The benefits of building a mentorship relationship are well documented, as the experience of the Chicago Bridge Mentees demonstrates.

In an evaluation, one Mentee explained: “It was like having my own cheering section. It was great to spend two hours a month with someone who was only interested in my success.”

Mentees were able to directly benefit from personalized support from a knowledgeable and well-established professional with shared interests and goals. Many Mentors could empathize with their Mentees, having experienced many similar challenges when first entering the eldercare workforce.

And Mentors Feel Connected to the Next Generation of Leaders

The Chicago Bridge Mentorship Program created a process by which seasoned professionals could meet and share their hard-earned knowledge and connections with new professionals eager to learn. Mentors have already shown their dedication to the field through their years of service, but their role in this program ensures their contribution will extend far beyond their time in the workforce. Each Mentor’s legacy will include the achievements of these Mentees, future leaders and advanced practitioners both locally and nationally.

It should be stated, however, that the education was not one-sided. Mentors also reported learning from their Mentees. New ideas, new theories, and new perspectives flowed from Mentor to Mentee and back again. As one Mentor stated: “We both seemed to have benefited from sharing with each other and discussing current happenings in the field.”

Chicago’s Older Adults Benefit

The Chicago Bridge Mentorship Program facilitated the transfer of lessons from past Mentors’ successes and failures to current Mentees. This wisdom passed from seasoned professionals gives emerging professionals better contextual understanding of the state of the aging field today and informs decisions made about tomorrow. These relationships establish a strong foundation for future exchanges of knowledge and ideas. And who benefits most from this program? Chicago’s older adults, who receive care and attention from these more informed and confident professionals. We are certain the results of the Chicago Bridge Mentorship Program, both as a pilot and an ongoing program, will be felt by Chicago’s aging community for years to come.

* This article was edited by Arlene Wanetick

On Wednesday, September 15th, Rush University Medical Center’s Older Adult Programs hosted Chicago Bridge’s panel discussion about transitional care. Older adults face unique challenges when moving across care settings. The increased prevalence of chronic conditions, functional and cognitive limitations, polypharmacy, social isolation, and other factors make older adults particularly vulnerable to poor transitions. The results can be which can be dangerous and costly for older adults, their families, and the national health care system as a whole as one in five Medicare beneficiaries return to the hospital within thirty days of discharge. Event panelists offered practical methods for addressing this critical issue.

The speakers represented transitional care from multiple different perspectives:

• Michele Packard, Enhanced Discharge Planning Program Social Worker at Rush University Medical Center, opened the forum with a presentation about her work as a clinician in a hospital-based telephonic short-term care coordination model utilizing master’s prepared social workers as transitional care managers.

• Caroline Ryan, Manager of the Aging Resource Center at Adventist LaGrange Memorial Hospital, described her unique program which integrates a community-based agency into a hospital to minimize delay in services and ensure linkage into appropriate community resources post-discharge.

• Claudia Cook, Eldercare Consultant at LivHOME, Inc., shared information about the role of private geriatric care managers in supporting older adults across transitions between care settings, such as from hospital to home, from hospital to skilled nursing facility, and from skilled nursing facility to home.

• Kristen Pavle, Policy Analyst with the Health and Medicine Policy Research Group, brought the audience up to date on current health care literature around transitions. She also educated the audience about efforts of the Illinois Transitional Care Consortium, a collaboration of community and hospital-based providers working to develop a transitional care model for the state of Illinois.

Presentations on each project were supplemented by a lively discussion with meeting attendees. All sixteen Bridge members present shared their professional and personal experiences with care transitions and swapped resources for supporting clients. The discussion also turned to the role of health care reform in bringing about change, particularly in relation to preparing for changes in Medicare reimbursement for readmissions within thirty days of a prior hospitalization.

Resources Available to Support Older Adults

Attendees were also encouraged to use resources available to support older adults across transitions, even if they do not work with a formal transitional care program. Such resources can be found online through organizations such as the National Transitions of Care Coalition, National Coalition on Care Coordination, and the United Hospital Fund’s Next Step in Care initiative. The Chicago Bridge is grateful for the opportunity to learn about this important topic from such passionate and knowledgeable colleagues.

Millions of older adults have lived through seven, eight, and even nine censuses, but in this day and scam-around-every-corner age, even mail from Uncle Sam is under extra scrutiny. Confusion about the census process and worry about scams may discourage many older adults from participating in the decennial event. The accuracy of this important snapshot of the American population, and the very future of many aging services, depend on older adults being counted. Professionals in the field of aging are optimally situated to encourage older adults to participate in this exciting and valuable national event by advocating on behalf of Census 2010, explaining the process, and educating seniors about remaining safe from tricks.

In 2006, Andrew Reamer of the Brookings Institution explained in a briefing on Capitol Hill: The Census Bureau is directed to count every single resident of the U.S. These data, as noted, are used for the purposes of apportionment. They have other fundamental uses as well. They are used for the purposes of redrawing Congressional, state, and local legislative districts. They are the basis for the allocation of billions of federal dollars annually. And they determine how trillions of dollars in business investments will be spent.

Financial Implications of the Census

Simply put, the Census decides how we as Americans will spend our money. Major funding and allocation of resources across services from transportation to infrastructure to healthcare all result from census data. This is particularly important to older adults who depend on publicly funded programs such as those through the Older Americans Act. Funding to states and within states can result from decisions influenced by census data. In fact, it’s not radical to say that many of our jobs in the aging field exist because of the Census.

Political Implications of the Census

Even the volume of our voice in Congress is based upon census data. Census population counts can result in redistricting, or the redrawing of electoral maps based upon population. Redistricting can mean success or failure for each side of the political aisle in highly polarized swing states. Census data can also result in congressional reapportionment, or changes in the number of Representatives each state has in the House of Representatives. For example, Illinois lost a congressional seat after Census 2000 due to more rapid growth measured in other states.

Social Service Implications of the Census

Census data also influences program development and expansion of services provided to older adults. Many organizations turn to the Census as a convenient tool to inform an assessment of community needs. Inaccurate Census numbers can negatively influence program development and the very way we provide services to our clients. The bottom line: the more seniors completing the Census, the better off our aging services, both financially and programmatically.

Avoid Census Scams

But what about scams? Horror stories from friends and clips on the nightly news paint older adults as easy targets, and unfortunately, Census 2010 serves opportunity to scammers on a silver platter. While seniors shouldn?t let the fear of scams keep them from participating in the Census, they should exercise extra caution during this nationwide count. Older adults can start by remembering three key facts:

1. The Census Bureau will never try to sell you anything
2. The Census Bureau will never ask you for money
3. The Census Bureau will never contact you by email

The Bureau may send a Census taker to your home if you do not return your form. Older adults, and anyone receiving a visit, do not need to let these people into their homes. The Census Bureau also reminds us that all official Census takers will have an official Census badge, and they will never ask for your social security number. When in doubt, call the U.S. Census Bureau at 1-866-872-6868 or contact your regional Census office.

What Seniors Can Do

The Census has never been shorter or easier to complete, but this doesn’t eliminate the confusion and fear older adults might feel about the tally. It is our job as professionals in the field of aging to advocate on behalf of the Census and make this process as painless as possible for our clients.

Don’t worry. We have help. Your regional Census office is a great place to start with questions. Census takers can also ease confusion, especially for older adults residing in a group setting like a skilled nursing facility. Also, older adults with visual impairments and language barriers can benefit from assistance through the Census Bureau. Countless tools are available to aid in counting everyone, and we need to use them because the importance of this decennial event cannot be overstated.

Uncle Sam needs you, your friends and colleagues, to ensure all older adults get counted on April 1, 2010.

**This article was edited by Danielle Dodson.

Photo courtesy of: quinn.anya on flickr.com

But the question becomes: what effect does Hoarders have on the nation’s perception of this professionally recognized compulsive disorder. Hoarders has profiled over 40 individuals thus far in its first two seasons. What role do these 40 people and their families play for the country’s estimated 2 million hoarders? What image do these people portray for the public tuning in for weeknight entertainment? The answers to these questions are not entirely clear.

Hoarding: An Aging Issue

According to the Los Angeles Department of Public Health, hoarding is the excessive collection and retention of things or animals until they interfere with day-to-day functions such as home, health, family, work and social life. Severe hoarding causes safety and health hazards. Mental health professionals agree that hoarding is closely linked to certain mental health issues such as obsessive-compulsive disorder, trauma, and depression.

As America ages, the prevalence and consequences of hoarding will increase. Demographics of people who hoard are hard to quantify due to the hidden nature of the problem, however experts agree that hoarding tendencies increase with age and older adult hoarders face unique challenges due to the disorder’s health and safety implications. Older adult hoarders with limited mobility may face increased difficulties moving around their home, and those with cognitive limitations may not have the judgment or critical thinking skills required to recognize fire hazards. The combination of older age and hoarding can be deadly.

Nationwide, older adults and their families confront the reality of hoarding in their daily lives. Professionals around the country respond to the growing imperative by creating hoarding task forces to study local hoarding patterns and intervene with identified hoarders. Meanwhile, A&E delivers images of hoarding to 1.4 million televisions for 60 minutes once a week.

Hoarders Fights the Stigma of Compulsive Collecting

Each week, A&E brings the issue of compulsive collecting to the national consciousness, normalizing hoarding behavior without painting it as an acceptable lifestyle decision. Viewers witness the heartache the profiled hoarders feel with the loss of each newspaper, item of clothing, or trinket. They can see the humanity of the hoarders and understand that hoarders are somebody’s mother or father, sister or brother, or child. They recognize the difficult path that led to the hoarder’s current situation and begin to see the uphill battle each family must forge as they work to dig out from under an oppressive pile of garbage and emotional damage. Viewers see how fervently people live the adage, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

But A&E’s influence is not contained to the television. The network proudly boasts a robust website for the show, complete with hoarding treatment resources and an online discussion forum about Hoarders and hoarding. Professionals and lay people come together to tell stories of their personal experiences with hoarding, to seek support from others, and to share resources and research with one another.

That’s Entertainment: The Sensationalizing of Compulsive Hoarding

While Hoarders draws attention to a growing problem, it also serves another function: entertainment. The show gives the casual Monday night viewer the opportunity to unwind while watching someone else’s drama unfold on screen. Armchair psychologists can kick back after a long day and indulge in a generous dose of schadenfreude: “My apartment may be messy, but at least I can still sit on my couch.”

Hoarders turns pain into amusement, capitalizing on the American audience’s lust for the extreme. This extends to the show’s website, as well. Nestled among the resources and community forum is a photo gallery of hoarders homes where viewers can relive their favorite Hoarders moments. There seems to be reason to believe that A&E, which seemed so well-intentioned and mission-driven, may be similar to all other cable networks in their quest for the bottom line.

Attention Must Be Paid to Hoarding as Prevalence Increases

While the long-term implications of A&E’s Hoarders can be debated, its value in drawing immediate attention to the issue of hoarding is indisputable. The show offers a glimpse into a world unfamiliar and unfathomable to millions nationwide: the world of hoarders and their families. As aging professionals come together in task forces to address compulsive collecting in older adults, A&E’s Hoarders serves as an innovative method for placing hoarding in the national consciousness, particularly as the disorder’s prevalence grows in the years and decades to come.

Photo courtesy of: Grap on commons.wikimedia.org