Event ID: 1487887
Event Started: 1/21/2010 2:51:00 PM ET
Please stand by for realtime captions.
Good afternoon everybody. Who do I have on the call?
Jane from Iowa.
This is Lisa and Nancy and her brick.
And Sandy and Debbie from my out -- Wyoming.
Seattle.
Roger from Texas.
Carol Williams from North Carolina.
Julia Beam from Colorado.
Can you say your first name?
Julia.
Thank you.
Anchorage Alaska.
Okay.
Paddy black and Sheila Simmons from Kansas.
Amy from Michigan.
Bonnie from Memphis Tennessee.
Who else?
Susie Miller from Nebraska.
Amy Peterson from Illinois.
Great. Thank you so much.
Kathy Adams from Maine.
Can't Wiseman from North Dakota. -- Kent.
Memphis Tennessee.
Suzy Stewart from Louisiana.
Mary Alice from South Carolina.
Eric from Illinois.
Carole Rossick says: Carole Rossick from Massachusetts is logged onto the conference
Dennis Welton says: Dennis Welton and Jennifer Cunningham from Jackson, Tennessee
Carole Rossick says: Carole Rossick from Massachusetts is logged onto the conference captioned
Brandie Stevens from Lincoln Nebraska.
Lisa, it is Carla.
Hello Carla.
Rick, this is Brian from RSA.
Hello Lisa.
Or whoever set high.
It is Lisa.
I am not sure if I can be heard. It is a little Bonnie.
Jan from Oregon.
Hello Jan.
Rob Oliver from disability rights the network in Pennsylvania.
Hello Rob.
We will just wait another few seconds before we get started.
This is Rob with RSA.
This is Nancy. There seems to be a lot of extra chapter on the line. If
you want to meet your line, it is a star six and if you have questions,
it is pound six.
This is Pat Casey from Laramie Wyoming.
Did you hear me?
Yes.
Thank you.
I think we are going to go ahead and get started I'm going to step away
for a few seconds so I can start the recording and we will get started.
Good afternoon everyone and thank you for joining us for today's call
titled keeping seniors in their home. Today we have a panel of four
speakers that will share information on what their state have been doing
in this area. We have from the Michigan disability rights coalition,
Amy Sterk and Jane K. from the Iowa program in assisted technologies and
from Wyoming we have Sandy and from the wind assisted technology
resources along with depth of running from the Wyoming geriatric
education Center.
Carole Rossick says: folks, please say your name before making your
comment or asking your question - i am following this on the conference
captioning site and reading what transpires thanks
And a
reminder I sent out yesterday, you guys saw a link for the hand out.
Hopefully you'll have those available, if not, the link is a reminder
e-mail that I sent out yesterday. As well, just a reminder to everyone,
to meet your line, press star six and two as needed, -- unmute, count
six. To start off, we are going to have Jane give us information on some
of the work she has done with the state of Parkinson's Association in
providing training at a local level to support groups about assistive
technology, specific to Parkinson's and how they worked on a DVD and it
is now available through the website as well as another training program
they have for training contractors and remodelers a universal design
has been made available to community colleges on trade programs as well
as work they have been doing with AARP so I'm going to head it off
today.
Good morning from a cold and icy Iowa. Basically, if you
remember I jumped on senior issues a little bit before everybody else
or before it was cool, as the saying goes. I want to really quickly
share five programs with you. The first is universal design and has a
booklet. That was provided in the hand out e-mail, or PDF and you are
welcome to use on your website. We originally printed that booklet. We
provided over 50,000 of them across the state and now, we can't afford
to reprint them so just make it available online and use it as a
resource and a large number of our training, both consumers are very
happy with it and we have a large contingent of contractors that like to
use it, which is one way it is designed, to go room by room to someone
thinking about remodeling or building a new home, to think about what
they can do a different cost breakpoints. It was the lead interactivity
we did about five or eight years ago now but on Mother's Day, we had an
insert, eight page insert into our one big Sunday newspaper, we
basically have to in our state and it was featured later in the week --
as a secondary insert. It continues to be a focal point of a lot of our
activity to get people to think about that. That is the UD booklet. And
secondly, let's talk about, start talking about how we are addressing
things and the program for assistive technology cannot be the only water
bearer on these projects. We started negotiating and working with
collaborating, with different types of partners or cooperating,
depending on how much we were together. Over the last are, we worked
with the stay Parkinson's Association and provided local level training
to the support groups about assistive technology to help develop the
content that they wanted and presented it. This was so popular that the
state association wanted to work with us on a DVD that they can hand out
and provide the information by the website. That is being developed
right now, except unfortunately, today was going to be a major filming
day and all of our consumers who volunteered to do it, are not able to
travel. To the filming site and the film crews are not able to get to
the houses they are supposed to film from. That is available, we will
either. At this point, the stay Parkinson's group is so excited about
this that they want to run up the flagpole of national and have national
use it as a dissemination. It is topic specific to Parkinson's. It is
using them to help develop the content, what they are interested in and
actually the vast majority of it is they are dying paying for it. We're
just paying for the technical assistance being provided in the
development of in the content of the assistive technology part of it. It
has been a great example of nurturing of a collaboration, doing some
awareness and training act committee and they are taking the lead to pay
the dime and the time to get the information out and those of you who
heard me, and national meetings know that is a main goal of Iowa, we
can't pay for everything and we can't be the only people putting the
message out there the next similar type of program we are working with
an Iowa AARP, the Johnson County is one of the AARP livable community
projects so we are working extensively in that County and subcommittees
to provide technical assistance awareness and training and working with
them to have assistive technology inserted into their main topical
community activities. This is going to give us material information that
we can share across the state, once it is developed. Again, we are
providing the technical assistance in the direction that they are the
group carrying a heavy load of water.
The first one is the
housing committee which I've actually been on for about three years now.
One of our success is that I can actually do a code change in my report
next year, is that they got the visibility goes accepted by the lead
town in Johnson County. At the last meeting last week, the code people
from the three other communities said they would be following said as
their coats came up for review. And related to that is all the training
and awareness that goes along with the contractors. Last year we got the
home builders Association to sponsor, basically three universal design
homes in the Parade of homes with all kinds of awareness materials and
that was rather interesting because when I stood up or set up and
volunteered and raise my hand, I said I will help do this and was almost
kind of dreading it because of the amount of work it was going to take,
he home builders Association of two of the home builders basically said
no, Jane, we will do it. It is our job to do it. You have given us the
material and information and we will do it. So that is really great.
The home show, same type of thing, there was a model they are in
teaching and training on it. So here is her organization again, but it
has taken me years to develop that collaboration so they own it, it is
their project had they are doing it with technical assistance. Another
of the Johnson County livable communities is a fall prevention. We
started working on those types of topics. They are doing all kinds of
fall prevention. How modification in a tea is one thread a bit but I'm
having that opportunity to get into some display they are doing,
electronic information, and feature article in the newspaper.
Transportation, again, by working for Johnson County, it has given me
the entr&é;e into our state car that program where there are a
doing one-on-one assessments of people. Probably more what we would call
a demonstration level where they are helping people in their own cars,
look at the assistive technology that will keep them safe drivers.
BSafe driver AARP education program are kind of tied together but
again, by offering some technical assistance of the carpet program and
others additions, they are doing what we call demonstrations and
awareness activities and I'll have to do that anymore. Actually today we
just talked about doing a local cable TV training program on that which
then becomes available all the time. This is just another community and
state-level program that allows me to get a lot of information out
without having to be all of my time and energy. The next thing I would
like to talk about is the Iowa contractors network. This is a project
that we have been working on for over 10 years in Iowa. We provide her
own training for Iowa contractors. We do not certify them, per se, and
offer a certificate of completion. And help them learn how to market,
help them market themselves and things like that.
We work
closely with the Iowa home builders Association on the but Iowa decided
to set up our own contractor training because most of our remodelers in
Iowa and a large number of our contractors do not belong to the national
home builders Association, they are too expensive and they don't get
their money out, in their opinion, they are words not mine. So they are
not eligible to take the certified aging in place a specialist program
are the caps program although we have helped make that available at
least annually, if not twice a year in our state, it is just a majority
of the people who do the work can't get, aren't eligible to take the
training. We have been doing that in our trainer also does that in the
community college home trades program. All of the trade program an Iowa
are building, universal design homes or visible homes at least and are
using those were awareness activities. Our next step is, right now we
are in the midst of converting that training to five online modules.
Through a public health initiative, we are working with public health.
And living well with the disability project to do that. There'll be five
online modules when that is done. Yesterday I would have had to say for
but we figured it had to figure out the money for all five of them late
yesterday afternoon. There is an overview and general home universal
design and accessibility. And implications for home design. Ramps,
bathrooms, and workplace.
We hope to be other ones and follow
up on that the right now we decided to go and try and online, we know
there are limitations in dealing with the tradespeople on this. But we
can't afford necessarily to keep doing in-person trainings on this, even
will partner with the community college trade programs to help sponsor
it, we are reaching to view is too much work. We are going to try the
online and see what happens and we had input from contractors on this,
we are trying to make it very, even though it is online, we are trying
to make a contractor family and realizing these contractors may not have
been real academic to start with. So it is a trial under a funded
project to see if that will happen. Windows are available, anybody
across the nation can take those, including family were consumers, any
type of service provider besides the contractors. When that is
available, I will let you know, it is just not ready. The final thing I
want to talk about real quickly before I pass it along to Amy, these
small changes big difference project.
I should mention that the
Iowa contractor trainer is working with the Wisconsin Tech and she can
go there and do some training also so they just started kind of looking
at her work up there to greet small changes, big difference.
I
started this way back when. What I think we were still the original with
three years of funding. And many of you have replicated that project.
It was originally started as a way to do a awareness activities across
the state to consumers. To get the information, the research-based
information down to the consumer and the people that really helped the
elderly stay in her own home. They don't go to the rehab Association
meetings, big don't go to the research-based tom modification meetings,
that is not worthy service providers govern area agencies on aging. This
is a project we started many years ago and has been replicated in many
other states. But I am not that active in small changes anymore. I know
not all of our agencies have continued to do it, but more than half of
them still do it in some shape and form of awareness activities.
Michigan is much more active in it right now. I'm going to pass off to
Amy for Michigan right now. To let her talk about small changes, big
differences.
Thank you. We are very happy to one of the state
that has taken Iowa's lead and back in the original act, we started
small changes big differences after hearing about it from Iowa and now
we have a new and revised program but we are sharing. We have kids at
locations around the state. With low cost 80 for community living and
Lisa has posted our presentation for all of you to take and use it as
you would like to present the information. All of the devices and the
kids cost less than $100. We also present research that shows that
interventions increase functional independence, decreased
hospitalization, decreased nursing home stays and prevent falls. The
workshops are really interactive. We have gotten the most positive
feedback and evaluations of any training we have ever given. With the
workshops. We are training nurses and social workers were care managers
with waiver agents and area agencies on aging around the state and we
also do training for seniors, nursing home residents and staff. The
devices cover key categories cooking, baking and dressing, memory,
mobility, recreation, environmental control. When we go out and present
with small changes big differences we also provide our exchange user
program and alternative financing programs and those kids are then used
for demonstrations and they promote their demonstrations using the kit.
When we are doing demonstrations using the long-term small changes big
differences small kid, we work with centers for Independent living
around the state. We are part of a process that acquired funding for
Center for Independent living staff to help people transition out of
nursing homes in our state and the staff that do transitions also
provide demos of these small changes devices when necessary, for people
in the transition process. We also just started using the ATA peak
pressure on the 18 for community living to promote those demonstrations
in training.
We have also been very deeply involved for more
than 10 years in the deinstitutionalization movement out of nursing
homes in Michigan. We were part of the real choice systems change grants
and the remedies to the Olmsted lawsuit in Michigan that developed
single point of entry throughout our state and we were on the ground
with developing the manual for standards for support coordinators for
single point of entry and we included promoting assistive technology and
learning about assistive technology as key components of the supports
coordinators job. We also implemented training to the single point of
entry to include and support consumer led models and real person
centered planning that included assistive technology. We also were
involved in a pilot at the single point of entry. We helped write a
grant to fund the position that would do prevention using assistive
technology and we have helped fund a position, a full-time occupational
therapist actually that went out to people's homes and help them
identify assistive technology that would work for them. We also
developed a curriculum on how to help people transition out of the
nursing homes and I think Lisa has a link to that. We did the training
around the state and also trained our nursing home. They were trained in
transition and how to make referrals for centers for Independent living
to help people get out of the nursing home and also how to help people
acquire assistive technology both in the nursing home and in the
transition process. We also helped push for in the housing area, what is
known as PA 182 in Michigan. We found that finding accessible housing
was a real problem in helping people transition so under PA 182, new
units, new homes a funded through our state Housing Authority are to be
designed under type of the dwellings which I guess is short of universal
design.
We also worked on the collaboration, I guess was how
we defined under the grant reporting persistence to increase funding for
our waiver programs for two years in a row during devastating ongoing
devastating budget crisis in Michigan. And also in helping people access
housing, we were at with our public Housing Authority at the state
level and around the state to change their definition of homelessness so
it included people living in nursing homes so they could transition out
with access to specialized vouchers. We also have separate money to
promote and advocate for long-term care reform so we persist the page in
our state Olmstead coalition and our Gov.'s task force on long-term
care. Which was a result of Michigan's Olmsted lawsuit. As part of that
work we have assisted in writing successful grant to CMS included cash
and counseling and a real choice of systems change. As part of the
ongoing collaboration of the state level, we will be partnering this
year at the off the -- office of services for the aging, these small
changes kid in all the senior centers in our state and I'm very hopeful
about that but that might not happen but that is what they are
interested.
We also used see grant from the former ATP program
to farm zero, actually our partners formed zero step which is now urgent
certification program for builders, it sounds a similar to what is
going on in Iowa. Promoting universal design as a adjunct to certified
aging employee specialists. This year, I will be presenting at the
Michigan affordable housing conference to raise awareness about
assistive technology using these small changes big differences kit. I
think that about covers it. I am guessing Wyoming is next.
Thank you Amy. This is handy. -- Sandy. I am going to briefly overview
some of our work and give this to Deb Flemming from our Wyoming
geriatric education Center because it is a partnership that some of you
may not have thought about. Probably our stronger work in aging is
because of our partnerships with Agricola the and are aging and
disability resource Center. For a DRC, dad and I were the co-GIs on
that. We helped develop at work closely with our project, our nursing
home transition program and with the financial for a tea. Specifically
for seniors we developed a video of transitioning into a disability
which is a vision disability and that has had actually great reviews and
we continue to disseminate data. Barry was handing me a postcard that
we just got on that, thanking us for that work. Our geriatric education
Center, I would like to introduce to Deb Flemming and she is the
director of that and she can tell you a little bit about what the
education centers do and also some of the work towards fall prevention
and rehabilitation that has gone on in Wyoming
Thank you Sandy.
We have been very fortunate to be mentored and assisted by the Wyoming
Institute for disability while we are housed within their suite of
offices here and has given us an opportunity to really farm that nexus
between disability and aging around a lot of education for students and
an some of the programming. I wanted to talk a little bit about fall
prevention, that was one of the topics that was suggested to us. Today a
little bit about some of the work we have done what that. First in
describing the issue of calls and then talk about a conference that was
held last May in Cheyenne, does the Wyoming conference on aging are
pulled together several partners to do a session for that. And then a
very specific program that we have, of the northern part of our state
that is a partnership between a rehab hospital and a state-funded
assisted living center. First of all, to talk about fall prevention,
just to make you aware, there are so many resources for information
about this, AARP is another important partner for us and they have all
kinds of materials they have a caregiver checklist and just go to the
website and you will find all sorts of resources for consumers and for
professionals. Also look at the CDC website, they have information about
preventing falls among older adults and some of the statistics I will
be giving you a run information from the CDC. We also have, in our
country, a fall prevention Center of excellence and I was not aware of
that until he started looking into this. You can look at stop the
falls.word. Stop all start work. -- Stop. Word. They are doing
incredible work there the ball present -- preventive Center for
excellence. National Institute on aging, you're not familiar with them
as a resource, they have the age of pages and they are a 1 to 2 page
handout, on a variety of topics but they do have one that is called
falls and fractures so I invite you to take a look at that. There is a
CDC, and you can go to the national Center for injury prevention and
control website at CDC, they have sent it to fall prevention documents
and in looking through these, some of these statistics are pretty
startling. The unintentional falls are a threat to the lives
independence and health of adults 65 and older. Every 18 seconds and
older adults is treated in emergency departments for a fall. I just
think that is stunning. Every 35 minutes, which is about how long this
has been going here, someone dies as a result of their injuries. I think
it is such a crisis in this country and we are probably not recognizing
it as such. Among older adults, 60% of fatal falls occur in the home.
Many of those are preventable. The education that we can do around that
fall prevention, how to improve the environment, how to look for the
risks within the home. We had a handout that was quite graphic. It was a
picture of a home and came tiny 14 risk factors within this picture and
circle them. They were all very common things that many older adults
have in their homes and don't even recognize them as they fall risk. So
60% of the fatal falls occur in the home of 30% in public places. Again,
that is where the government entities and cities and towns need to be
taking a look at that and only 10% and healthcare institutions. We often
think that is where most of these they don't falls happen in nursing
homes and hospitals. One out of three adults, 65 and over, falls each
year. That is amazing. 103 is going to have some kind of bothered out of
those that fall, 2030% suffer moderate to severe injuries. Older adults
are hospitalized for injuries five times more than injuries from other
causes. It is the big one. That is the one we should be focusing our
attention on. More than two thirds of injury reported deaths after age
85 are related to false and annually, those admitted to hospital after a
fall, only 50% survived. So about a 50% death rate from those false. --
False. -- falls.
The problem is also big in nursing homes and I
know they are very aware of this and trying to make a lot of changes to
improve the incidence of falls . Nursing home residents account for
20% of deaths from falls although the limit of the 5% of 65 and older.
So atypical nursing home with a new hundred beds reports 100 to 200
falls every year. Those of the reported false. I know there are many
balls that are underreported. There are also a high incidence, I suspect
and assisted living centers who have less strict reporting
requirements. 75% of residents in nursing homes fall each year. They
fall more than once on an average 2.6 times a year. And about 35% of all
injuries occur among residents who cannot walk. These are people who
are in nursing homes or are pretty much in bed and they still have falls
issue.
Talking about some of the partnerships that we have
engaged in the way to the conference on aging, we listed the help of our
University of Wyoming family of medicine residency program and one
other -- today presentation on the influence of medication and vitamin
supplements on a risk and prevention of falls. That is an important
thing to take a look at. What kind of world is medication and the use of
vitamin D, other vitamins that can have an impact. We then called up
VBA. We have a nice VA Hospital in Cheyenne. It is a fairly large one.
They have a very active fall prevention program there. And they sent a
multidisciplinary team to the conference. They provided us with a
general toolkit and they talked about their fall prevention efforts on
the extended care unit and in their recreation therapy, we had licensed
clinical social worker and a restorative aide, and actual rehab unit.
And by Randy Wigle who is a professor here at family consumer sciences
and talked about agri-ability and I think Sandy is going to talk more
about that in the -- minute and Mary, who is also the Rue, who did a
demonstration of many a T. devices that can assist people in fall
prevention.
One of the things that the VA team talk about a
different ball risk assessments. I'm not going to go into detail is the
just to give you an idea, of the range of different scales to assess a
fall risk. There is a marked fall scale, behind her, two of those
skills, be tied up and go test, which is one of many physicians use
their offices for the multidirectional reach test, the balance has
comedy for squared step test and how environmental assessment is another
important assessment. Let me just describe quickly, the shortest one,
easiest to administer and this is one that you often see an assessment
in a doctors office, the get up and go test. Basically all the involved
is having someone sit in a straight back chair and asked them to get up
without using the armrest as they can. The standstill momentarily, walk
forward 10 feet, turn around and walk back to the chair and turn and be
seated. And it is impressive what can be determined from just that
simple quick test. They will be looking for the sitting balance, how
people can sit in a chair and maintain a balance. The transfer from
sitting to standing, the patient stability and walking and the ability
to turn without staggering. And the balance ability of an individual.
We have, as I said, up in the northern part of the state, we have the
got to rehabilitation center. It is a small rehabilitation center, it
has been there for a number of years and is located next to the
hospital. This is located in Hot Springs County called that because they
are famous for their Hot Springs, where people come from all over the
state to bask in the warmer waters there. Located near the
rehabilitation center is the Wyoming pioneer home. This is unusual for a
state to have its own assisted living center because it is based on a
sliding scale. People can come from all over the state and regardless of
their income level, they are accepted as a revenue resident and a
welding pioneer home. They form a collaborative effort to provide a
screening process when people went to the assisted living center, the
staff of the Wyoming pioneer home doing fairly extensive balance and
fall risk assessment and then they work with the therapist at the rehab
center to get them into a wellness program. They will actually come and
pick them up from the hospital every day and take them over for their
strength training classes. Access them using the balance of system and
do whatever needs to be done. So they get it right from the very
beginning of figuring out if people are at high risk and intervening
with that kind of prevention work. At the hospital, they have what is
called the biotech system, SD, and this is a piece of equipment, I
imagine it is fairly expensive but you stand on this thing and it is
designed to improve the balance, increase agility and develop muscle
tone. And assist -- it is an excellent tool in that field of fall
prevention. It is also available to people. It shows what can be done in
a very rural area. Utilizing the resources that are there and the
expertise and working together in a partnership. They have substantially
reduced the falls that occur within the assisted living center. They
have had far either -- for fewer hospitalizations have been able to
track the data over time since they started with the partnership and I
think it is a model that could be used in a lot of other locations and
that is about it. Sandy said I was supposed to talk a little bit about
geriatric education Center so I will fill -- throw in a quick pitch and
be quiet. The lambing geriatric education Center has been at the
University of Wyoming since 2007. These centers are located all across
the country. There are 40 of them. We are one of the newer ones. They
were established and they are funded by the health resources services
administration to provide education and training for health
professionals, both future health professionals many are students or the
University but also to provide continuing educational for health
professionals out in the field. So that is it in a nutshell. Give a
listen. -- Thank you for listening.
This is Sandy. I will
summarize that we have had to rely on collaboration. Much as Jane has
said, you can't do it all. We certainly are still at the AP 101 stage in
Wyoming. Trying to educate people. We're using our collaborators to do
that. And are port and a lime at what the lambing geriatric education
Center. And looking towards health and prevention as much as
rehabilitation. And then using assistive technology for support and
independent living after. And I think that is all he has to say in
Wyoming.
All right. That, does anyone have any questions? For our group? To unmute it is pound six.
This is Nancy. Sandy, could you talk a little bit more about your partnership with Agricola he? -- Aggregate ability?
Sure. We are just finishing our first goal, our first term of an
aggregate would he project. Our AP program prior to this one worked on
some submissions of we have never been successful with. So we partnered
with Cooperative extension, that is a mandate. And we partnered with
them and we were successful. And the way we were to does far, we did
submit an application for a second round. The way we set up is that the
base of the program is actually here in our AP program and that is
through Mary monkeys. She does all the and take calls, referrals and a
general request, they have not gone through Cooperative extension and
also for office we handle most of the conferences and demonstrations of
things, some of the trainings are coordinated here. But the more
formalized education stays in Cooperative extension and although we are
involved with that, we have contracted occupational therapist who do the
on-site assessments. They go and do that but they are in other areas of
the state. Basically, it within the AP program where the base, the
public face of aggregate ability. The hell?
Yes it did. Thanks.
Are there any other programs on the call that are using these small changes big differences kit? Other than Michigan?
Maybe they need to be dusted off.
This is Jane. I don't know, I do know of several states, again, they
roll them out a long time ago and they are using them in a small part of
it are a certain way. I know Pennsylvania and Georgia are using them in
a certain way. And these types of things. The problem is we can only do
so much with limited awareness.
Marsha Willoughby says: Where can the kit be bought?
A
The kits are not put together to purchase. I can provide you with a
list and maybe Amy, can provide, each day personalized as the exact
devices that are in them but I can shed a logo with you and had to put
them together and those types of things.
I believe our list is up on the website.
Lisa, this is Helen and Alabama.
Hello.
Just listening to you guys, I don't know if we piggyback off of someone
or not, but I am looking at a brochure that I design, several years
ago, this was back in the 90s. Late 90s and early 2000. Actually, I
adjust it as a 21st-century seniors. We have this model from someone but
we partner with the &� ; la Bama area agencies, AAA's and
these Department of Senior services here, the collaborative project and
we came up with a kit of items at that particular time, the items were
no more than $20 each. But they were low-tech items and we had about 30
items in the kids and we had several kids that we left with the Jabar
AA, AAA offices and it was train the trainer modules. We would love to
update, go back and revisit that an updated but I would like to see
another video because the video we were using at the time in our kids
was the use of assistive devices by older person with disabilities. That
was very old. I think it was a buffalo or something, years ago. If that
has been updated and anyone knows of any videos with seniors and
low-tech devices for safety and independence in their home, I will love
to have a copy of that.
Again, with the Parkinson's project we
have found that a lot of the older groups want specified information and
we have worked with arthritis, we have a -- we have worked with
Alzheimer's, our most recent effort has been with Parkinson's, but they
are general but they won't be really, specific to whatever the topic is,
fall prevention and it next and tucks it a little bit versus the
generic one is for everyone.
Nobody is disabled but they all want to be special.
Carole Rossick says: This is Carole Rossick with a question for Amy
about the small changes big differences program and my question is, do
you include information on how to make home modifications for people
with hearing loss and deafness - there are a number of assistive
listening devices, telecommunications, alerting devices and signaling
systems that can be incorporated into a home and modifications that can
be made to make the acoustics and lighting more suitable
We do have some devices that address hearing loss and our kids. We
have, the alarm clocks with vibrating alarms and things like that. We
also have the emergency alert devices that have readouts and
notifications for people with hearing loss. We don't really have terms
of environmental modification devices in a kid. Maybe -- kit. Maybe six
or seven. We do have partnership with the hearing loss Association of
Michigan who have their own kids. -- Kids. They are going around and
doing presentations specific to hearing loss. They do demonstrations as
well.
And Iowa we had some beginning information on it, our
older world population especially has noise induced hearing loss issues
and so you are dealing with older Iowa farmers and you have to come in
through the back door.
Honestly, we have recreation devices for
assisted living with television and things like that so we try to go in
the back door starting with recreation.
We have some and
actually have increased and what we are dealing with, very much along
the lines of what she was talking about. We kind of comment -- come in
through the front door, or the white door type of deal and come around
through it that way, but we have used again, several types of awareness
activities, either with small changes big difference or other activities
to get that information out. Now, recently, we were requested, actually
something that they can come together about and that is the World War
II veterans and now the veterans coming back from Iraq. It is a common
issue that they both have noise induced hearing loss from war that is
affecting their relationships.
That is a great end.
That is an end. I wait for the end and then go for it.
Again, not knowing the funding. It is a huge, and Iowa, our veterans
hearing support is huge. They will pay for everything and anything at
the veteran just comes in. It is kind of a real no-brainer that we are
doing awareness and had the answer and the funding for it.
I
have a question for some of the other programs. What are you guys doing
in this area? Are you doing anything similar? Are you taking a different
approach?
This is Kathy from Maine. I cannot for some
information on what we have been doing in Maine. I am an OT and I am
with the state main site. I just pulled up our website. Back in 2005, we
created six publications, very short publications, geared towards
promoting information around assistive technology for seniors. The six
information guides are titled tools and ideas for easier loading. They
are on our website and we just have done a revision of them and they are
going to print, we are doing a sizable reprinting them but there are
six information guides. I have used them extensively across the state
with managers and family care giving trainers through our area agencies
on aging. We only have five AAA agencies in Maine so they are pretty
accessible. Actually, I just very recently did a webinar for the
caregiver coordinators across the state, to bring them back to focus on
our assistive technology resources and I used these as six information
publications to focus that group. That is something you might want to
look at on our website in the publications section and we are Maine and
CIT.org. -- Main CITE.org. The publications are on our site.
Thank you Kathy.
Does anyone have any additional questions before we wrap it up?
This is data -- Debbie and Wyoming. I just wanted to toss this out to
the group and probably you are all involved with this but just to make a
point of whatever program that you are working with, or whichever
health professionals, you need to stress the importance of the home
visit. We try to take a real interdisciplinary approach to that, but
only with taking our young resident physicians out of homes and having
them do a house call but also involving nurses, therapists, social
workers and pharmacist. And for people to have that recognition, that is
a whole different person, that consumer at home versus the patient that
they see in the 15 minute office visit. Not only to encourage folks to
do that but also to make those home visit some unstructured so they look
for the environmental issues and have a checklist of the home
environment so those are very meaningful visits so that is just my plug
for that. I think there is so much to be learned about a person when you
see them in their own environment.
Actually I would like to
piggyback on that, the research we have done and the, when you're in a
homeless so when you need to start with what they want to use 84. What
is interesting to them. One of the articles that I used for my
presentation said only about half of 80 is actually used. The rest of
the my closet and I've been told that people think that half might be
less than half. We really focus on talking with people about what is
important to them and what do they want to be able to do and starting
using 18 air. And building upon it and not just saying I had a T. for
these three things.
Also, this is Jane. I have also found very
much what you are saying, but if you can get them to accept 180 device
and it works for them, they will do others.
Yes.
To the person from Maine to the website again please?
Mains site -- MAINECITE.ORG
Okay. Thank you. You any other comments? -- Any other, question mark
all right. -- Thank you very much to Jane, Amy, Sandy. Thank you for
taking the time to share what you have been doing. Thank you for giving
the participants some good ideas to think about and with that, have a
great afternoon.
Thank you Lisa.
Thank you.
We appreciate it.
[Event concluded]