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What Goes Into a Life Care Plan? | Hill Law Group, PA

Data gathering Forms  | Hill Law Group, PA

 These  planning questionnaires are worth their weight in gold! Everyone should, IMCO, have a family records notebook built from these forms.

Dave M.



Personal Support Workers, or PSWs, are starting to fight back, but their wage increases equate to worry for clients, families and service provider agencies.

THE CAREGIVERS' LIVING ROOM A Blog by Donna Thomson: A Fight Between PSWs, Clients and Agency Service Providers Spells Trouble For All
an article by always erudite Howard Gleckman  He wrote in Forbes:

Should the aides who provide home care for frail elders and younger people with disabilities receive a living wage and decent benefits?  If they do, how can families, who often are unable to afford care today, be expected to pay those higher wages and benefits?  Should the market be allowed to set these prices, or should government intervene through minimum wage and mandatory overtime laws? …. These questions have set off an enormous, but largely unnoticed, political firestorm.  In some states, they have pit states against the federal government, people receiving care against their aides, and large home care agencies against independent direct care workers.

In Ontario, exactly the same questions are being asked. This time last year, the then Ontario Liberal Health Minister Deb Matthews and Finance Minister Charles Sousa announced an election promise of an increase in the minimum wage for 34,000 publicly paid Personal Support Workers to $16.50 an hour by April 1, 2016, up 32 per cent from the current rate of $12.50.  Implementation of that promise hasn’t been easy.   According to the Canadian Union of PublicEmployees (CUPE), some home and community care agencies have chosen not to implement the wage increase or they exclude sick leave, vacation and training hours in the new hourly wages.  The sum total effect, says a CUPE spokesperson, is that most Ontario PSWs have yet to receive a wage increase.

The real lives of personal care workers are documented in a new film titled CARE, due for release later this year.   The trailer is riveting and I recommend watching it HERE for a clear picture of the human side of our crisis in home and community care.

The care workers depicted in the film are all women.  They are mothers and daughters who have left their own families behind in more impoverished countries in order to care for more affluent strangers in the United States. 

Many care workers in Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand match this description.  Eva Kittay drills down into the issues surrounding immigrant care workers and the role they play in a larger, profit driven dynamic.

The migration of care workers is caused both by a pull, the need for care workers, and a push, the need of these women to provide for their families.


Eva Feder Kittay‘From the Ethics of Care to Global Justice

The truth is that people need care and care workers must be able to earn a living wage. 

New LinkedIn Group
Canadian Caregivers United is a new group on LinkedIn.

Palliative Care for Caregivers | Get Palliative Care

Palliative Care for Caregivers | Get Palliative Care
Mayo Clinic

Top 10 Things Palliative Care Clinicians Wished Everyone Knew About Palliative Care

August, 2013   By Jacob J. Strand, MD, Mihir M. Kamdar, MD , Elise C. Carey, MD

 Today, family caregivers provide about 80 percent of elder care, delivering meals, taking loved ones to doctor’s visits and managing medications and family conflicts. This results in lost work hours or lost jobs, high stress and serious declines in physical and mental health. Palliative care is a solution.

Get Palliative Care

Get Palliative Care


What Is Palliative Care

Learn more about adult and pediatric palliative care, refer to the glossary and get answers to some frequently asked questions.
How to Get Palliative Care

Talk to your doctor, find a hospital and meet with your palliative care team. Just two simple steps to get palliative care.
Is Palliative Care Right for You

Take a quiz to determine if palliative care is right for you or a loved one.

Home Health Aide Certification and Certificate Programs

Home Health Aide Certification and Certificate Programs

 Each state has its own requirements for home health aide certification. Some states only require that the employing agency be certified, while others require home health aides to pass a certification exam following completion of an educational program. Besides a skills assessment examination, certification may also require a state administered criminal background check. Some states maintain a registry database of certified home health aides that can be accessed by the public

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Home Health Aide Training Requirements in MA

Massachusetts does not require a State issued certification, nor is there a State exam required to be eligible to work as a Home Health Aide.  Instead the State recommends national certification through the National Association for Home Care and Hospice. The NAHC requires a 75 hour training course and a competency test before you are eligible to apply for their certification.

Caregiving Criticism and Unsolicited Advice From Family - AARP

AARP Home » Home & Family » Caregiving »How to Handle Criticis...
How to Handle Criticism While Caregiving
Well-meaning advisers try to help but some can cause hurt
by Barry J. Jacobs, PsyD., AARP, December 29, 2014

Take it from whence it comes

Caregivers would be well-advised (there's that word again) to not
just react to the message being given but to consider the background and
intentions of the messenger. Advisers often have a sincere desire to
help, because they truly are caring and invested. They just don't have
enough information and understanding to know how to actually be helpful.
They are also unaware that their good ideas may come across as
critical. If you express appreciation for their caring, they will
usually feel satisfied that they are making a difference and stop
pressing specific recommendations.


Some people, though, use pieces of advice as thinly veiled barbs. Out
of competitiveness or their own misery, they consciously or
unconsciously mean to take caregivers down a peg. They should be kept at
arm's length. It is seldom worth debating them or giving them the
satisfaction of having caused hurt.

 Caregiving Criticism and Unsolicited Advice From Family - AARP

staff scheduling and labor management

OnShift  provides staff scheduling and labor management software

They are focused entirely on the long-term care and senior living industry, software and services are built upon an in-depth understanding of how providers work day-in and day-out, and how industry regulations and issues affect their every move.

{ staff scheduling and labor management is of interest to the world of Caregiving}

Jan 26, 2015 Mark Woodka posted the following to their  Long Term Care & Senior Living Blog

For some strange reason we encourage ourselves to prognosticate about the future annually as one year recedes and another begins.  These projections might not always be correct, but I think they nicely balance out our attempts at New Year’s resolutions and give us something to aim for. (I hope this list goes more smoothly than those resolutions usually do…)

I’d like to outline my predictions for long-term care and senior living in 2015 – the big things that may change how you run your communities and provide care for your residents.  So without further ado, here we go:

    Affordable Care Act Penalties: The Employer Mandate began January 1 after two years of delays, and we must now be very, very cautious in managing our workforces to ensure we do not get penalized.  There was a bill proposed to exclude certain industries from having to participate due to large populations of lower-wage hourly workers and low margins.  Guess what?  One of the original intents of the ACA was to get these very workers healthcare benefits.   Therefore, this bill is a non-starter, and we will not see our industry excluded.   The Affordable Care Act will remain the law of the land until and unless we have a new party in the White House in 2016, so tracking employee hours will be key.
    
    More Doc Fix Activity: The game of kick-the-can that has been the Doc Fix for the past decade will continue.  However, in an effort to kick the can as far as possible, Adam Vinatieri will be the kicker, and he will kick it 21 months into the future.  This will nicely coincide with the new administration taking office in January of 2017.  (I don’t think Congress will want to deal with this again in 12 months.)  Ideally, our friends at AHCA will be able to focus the pay-fors to other segments or maybe even help them find a permanent solution if in fact there is an appetite for one.

- See more at: http://www.onshift.com/blog/5-game-changing-predictions-senior-care-2015#sthash.36ZATwXG.dpuf



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Dealing with a “Code Brown”

Dealing with a “Code Brown” | Scrubs – The Leading Lifestyle Nursing Magazine Featuring Inspirational and Informational Nursing Articles
by Ani Burr, RN • October 22, 2010
When you are doing your best to get your client cleaned up, there is still that smell issue that can get in the way of your ability to focus and get in and out of there quickly! While it’s not guaranteed, you can try these tricks to protector your olfactory senses: