A nursing home ... not for my folks! : Families Caring for their Elderly at Home

This booklet is the second in a series of reports about elderly issues. The first, entitled The Elderly Have Spoken: Is Anybody Listening? The Impact of Fuel Costs on the Elderly, documented the impact of rising fuel costs on the elderly in Massachusetts. Each of the series reports seeks to capture the actual words, expressions, and feelings of elderly people and their loved ones. For the most part, the interviews were conducted by interviewers who are themselves 60 years old or older. We find that this age match provides greater insight and openness to the problems confronting the elderly in today\u27s society. In the following pages, you will find the stories of 68 families that have decided to care for their aging relatives in their own homes. Whenever possible, we have attempted to present the words of the family members themselves. These are telling words, unraveled in a moving document in which the authors\u27 job was merely to serve as organizer and communicator of the experience

Job Satisfaction of Home Care Case Managers: An Evaluative Look at One Home Care Corporation

Senior Home Care Services — Boston III, Inc. is a six year old private non-profit corporation with an annual budget of nearly $5 million. The agency currently delivers services to approximately 2,500 functionally impaired senior citizens per month in the Boston neighborhoods of South Boston, East Dorchester/Mattapan, East Boston, Beacon Hill, West End, North End, Charlestown, and South Cove. Over 5 7% of the case management staff has worked at the agency less than one year and 92.9% of the case management staff has worked at SHC for less than two years. The high turnover rate is well known to SHC administration and possible reasons for this turnover will be outlined later in this section of the report. Other descriptions of the SHC case management staff include: nearly 93% female; 97% white, primarily having SHC their first professional employer since college. In fact, 60.7% of the staff are younger than 24 years old, and nearly 79% are under 29 years of age. Just under half of the 28 case managers we talked to selected case management as their first job choice, but 60.7% indicated that they wanted to make a career in the human services working with the lederly. The tough economic times in human services was the reason most often given for accepting a position at SHC by those less eager to work with elderly or in case management. Therefore, for an agency serving urban elderly we have for the most part young white females with limited employment experience. The implications of this cultural homogeneity is a subject for further research, but is an area for policy examination and attention by SHC. To further test whether this staff description was applicable to other home care corporations and hence a matter for DEA review, we surveyed home care corporations throughout the Commonwealth. Every home care corporation in Massachusetts completed the survey. Results presented in Table 1 indicate a substantially wider spread in the ages of case managers than found at SHC. In fact, 52% of the 492 case managers identified in the study were under 30 years old. Only 28% were under 25 years old compared to 60.7% at SHC. (At the same time, only 10% of the state sample were over 55 years old.) Further descriptions of the case manager population statewide, however, do show some similarities to SHC. For example, 82% of the case managers in the agencies surveyed were female, and 93% were white (the others being 6% black, 0.6% Hispanic, 0.4% Cape Verdian) . Regarding job turnover, two agencies did not provide responses and two very small agencies reported very low turnover. Still, in averaging the job turnover rate for the twenty-five responding agencies the average tenure was 2.19 years — better, but not substantially different from SHC

THE ELDERLY HAVE SPOKEN: IS ANYBODY LISTENING? The Impact Of Fuel Costs On The Elderly

This report contains the findings of a study carried out by the Gerontology Program at the University of Massachusetts Boston concerning the effects of the escalating fuel costs on the lives of the elderly who must pay for their own heat. Through the use of an interview format known as modified critical incident technique, a team of mostly elderly students spent several weeks during the winter of 1980 eliciting responses from more than 100 elderly individuals from throughout the greater Boston area. Not surprisingly , this study has revealed a number of profound impacts that the radical turn of economic events has already had on the lives of older Americans. To begin, standards of living must be adjusted as a larger proportion of the monthly budget is spent on fuel. Living arrangements change as the thermostat is lowered and utilized living areas are reduced by closing off rooms to conserve fuel. Nutrition is often sacrificed for warmth. Health frequently suffers as a result, with colder room temperatures further aggravating certain perennial afflictions of old age, such as arthritis. Social contacts diminish as mobility lessens. Cars become an unaffordable luxury Embarrassment over the coldness of the home and concern over visitors\u27 health in such cold are additional disincentives to entertaining. Pride in oneself, as a self-sufficient person, as a hospitable person, as a responsible member of society, falters. In this timely report, the researchers rely heavily on the words of the elderly themselves to describe the circumstances and conditions they have experienced most recently. Selections from these interviews have been grouped thematically with sections on general trends and recommendations included. After listening to the elderly, their message has become painfully clear: something has gone terribly wrong and these people have become the unfortunate victims. The important question remains, however, who is listening and willing to do something about it!