Like 'Home/Life: National Aging in Place Council Newsletter, December 2009' on Facebook
Connecting to Facebook
Connecting to Facebook
Share 'Home/Life: National Aging in Place Council Newsletter, December 2009' on Facebook
Connecting to Facebook
Chapter Spotlight: The Greater Atlanta Chapter
It began with a mere coffee date, barely two months ago. Atlanta natives MaryLea Quinn and Candace Dubrof, aging in place professionals, found each other and discovered their shared desire to create stronger awareness in their community. This Atlanta twosome put their heads, and rolodexes, together to not just put on an outstanding Aging in Place Week event, but to create a full chapter of NAIPC in nearly record time: The Greater Atlanta Chapter.
For MaryLea, a social worker who now specializes as a community care coordinator for My Accessible Home, the key is education. “People don’t understand what ‘aging in place’ means,” MaryLea said of the growing movement. “We get referrals in a crisis situation after someone has already fallen. Our goal is actually to be preventative and modify homes when the occupants are still healthy.” MaryLea knows from experience that nearly 80% of seniors in nursing homes end up there because of a fall. “’Mom fell down the stairs and broke her hip’ situations are constant. I just saw the need for education and awareness,” MaryLea concluded. NAIPC provided the perfect outlet for that need.
Candace and MaryLea asked each other, “Do you think we can get something pulled together by Aging in Place Week?” They did their best and succeeded beyond expectations. “We booked space in the library, started to work on presentations, put ads in papers, told our colleagues, and started to really promote it even before it had all come together,” MaryLea said. Originally, they had expected approximately 20 attendees but found their event overflowing with more than 40 participants, both seniors and service providers alike.
“The event was wonderful,” MaryLea exclaimed. “We had such a short time to put it together. We started promoting before we had the final details. We wanted to discuss the essential components of a successful aging in place plan.” And discuss it, they did. Following the event, several attendees asked when they were going to feature similar presentations at other area libraries. Now, this new chapter is preparing a speakers bureau to travel around the greater Atlanta area delivering talks about the value of aging in place.
For more information on the Greater Atlanta Chapter of NAIPC, please email MaryLea Quinn and Candace Dubrof at GreaterAtlantaNAIPC@gmail.com.
What the new AgeInPlace.org means for your business
Visit AgingInPlace.org and you’ll notice a new energy and excitement coming from NAIPC members across the country. The source? A new website, redesigned from the ground up to more effectively serve both our network of service providers and seniors. Our mission, at NAIPC is to be the primary Senior Support Network for anyone interested in happily and healthfully aging in place. Our new website does this in a few key ways:
Listings: From every page on the site and in every category of service providers, connecting with the right listing is now easier and more compelling than before. Each individual member of NAIPC receives a listing which features an opportunity for a company description (500 characters max.), a company or image, and full contact information. To add your logo or description to your company’s listing, please email Adam at agerber@dworbell.com.
New Chapters: Belonging to, or starting, a local chapter is the most meaningful way to engage with the National Aging in Place Council. This week, we are proud to announce the formation of SIX new chapters to join our roster of active NAIPC communities. These chapters and their leaders have taken the initiative in their respective communities and are growing their reach to better serve their local seniors. If you live in any of these areas and if you are interested in learning more about chapter activities, please contact the following:
Forming a Local Chapter The chapter formation process has also just become a lot simpler.
To start a chapter, you must bring together 10 other service providers or community members to serve as your founding members and submit a petition to form a chapter. Our chapter formation petition is located on our new website at the link below: http://www.ageinplace.org/local_chapters/bringing_naipc_to_your_community.aspx.
For more information on the chapter formation process or to learn if there is a chapter in your neighborhood, please contact Adam Gerber at agerber@dworbell.com.
Membership: To better serve the growing Aging in Place professional community, NAIPC has re-booted its membership application process. For existing members, your current status and fees will remain the same, but there may be more opportunities to draw value out of the membership than you had previously been aware.
The most popular form of membership in NAIPC is the individual membership. Each individual member is entitled to one listing (featuring logos and descriptions) on the new ageinplace.org as well as member communications, the NAIPC member logo, and access to local chapter membership. The membership rate for individuals is $135 per year. Individual Membership Application
Additionally, if you would like to bring multiple employees from one company into NAIPC as members, the corporate membership is right for you. A corporate membership acts as a bulk discount for three or more members to join NAIPC as individuals. The rate is $375 for three members, and $100 per person for every additional member. Each member receives their own website listing.
If you work for a non-profit, public agency, or a university then our Public/Non-Profit membership can provide you with discounted access to all of our full membership benefits. The rate for these individuals is $65 per year.
All members may join local chapters as individuals or, if a prospective chapter does not yet exist, may come together to begin a new chapter. All chapter membership is by individual only and chapter dues vary by chapter. Please consult the membership application or your local chapter for chapter dues information.
When Debra Young built her home five years ago, she had a thought that is going to sound very familiar to all Aging in Place specialists out there: “We didn’t know if we were going to be in this home forever, but we decided to plan as if we were.”
Planning for accessibility needs comes naturally to Debra, an occupational therapist from a north Delaware suburb of Philadelphia. With over 15 years of experience working up and down the east coast, running the gamut from pediatrics to older adults - “Ages 3 to 102,” she says – Debra has turned an expertise in assistive technologies and home evaluations into her own business, EmpowerAbility, LLC.
Her company helps seniors and individuals with accessibility needs solve their problems. With her occupational therapy background, Debra approaches each case with a medical perspective. In a recent contract with a local nursing facility, she helped the staff re-imagine sleeping rooms that give seniors greater independence when on ventilators and greater access to water to minimize reliance on nursing staff for assistance. Other projects, including a contract with a local school district, focused on students with wheelchairs, ensuring that they have equal access to the facilities and full curriculum.
The home remodeling world, however, is the one that hits closest to home. As mentioned above, Debra designed her home outside Philadelphia with an eye toward Aging in Place. “I started in Philadelphia. It’s always been home to me. It’s where I met my husband Bill, who happens to have a spinal cord injury,” she said.
Their single-story, ranch-style home is designed to provide Debra and Bill a fully accessible lifestyle. “We built our home from a universal design perspective,” Debra said. “We wanted it to look like any other home. The front entrance is completely flat. It has a spacious layout with wide, 36-inch doorways with big transitions from room to room. The kitchen is fully accessible as well with lowered, ADA cabinetry and pull out shelving.”
“There are two features that show that it’s a home for a person with accessibility needs,” Debra continues, “Grab bars in the bathroom and a stair lift to the basement. Otherwise, there is no way to tell.” This final point is an important part of Debra and Bill’s independent living plan. If they decide some day to sell their home, their aging in place features will add value to the property rather then detract from it.
Debra is passionate about home remodeling and the Aging in Place world. With parents who are candidates for aging in place, she sees opportunity for this industry to grow all around. Recently, she completed her CAPS certification and is now the founder of NAIPC’s newest chapter in Philadelphia. Debra’s hope is to see the Philadelphia chapter and the whole Aging in Place community continue to evolve. “We will get more people from New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania and get some great presenters and educators at each meeting.”
“It’s completely exciting!” Debra exclaimed. “It’s the next step, the right step for me as an occupational therapist. Networking with providers has been so valuable. Everyone I’ve met has been such a great resource. I can now provide better services for the seniors. I am asked about contractors or reverse mortgages all the time, now,” she says, ”I can be more knowledgeable.”
If you haven’t heard about it through its TV commercials, than you probably have heard about it from the library of accolades it has been awarded lately. What is the ‘it’ that’s causing such a sensation? Great Call, Inc’s cell phone for people with the simplest cell phone needs: The Jitterbug.
The Jitterbug phone exists for one reason – to provide consumers looking for an affordable and straightforward cell phone with the simplest option imaginable. This phone is designed for all people with all ranges of accessibility needs – large buttons, an intuitive interface, and sound that just works as reliably as one would expect from a land line – but its use as a tool for helping seniors age in place is clear.
For a generation that grew up with phones whose prime feature was making and answering calls, the Jitterbug is a return to confidence. However, features such as LiveNurse, a $4/month service that quickly connects a caller to a live nurse for assistance, and Roadside Assistance, that brings helpful service to the highway for any travel related situations, make this phone a champion at encouraging seniors to live more independent lives. For small fees, more complex add ons like texting and international calls can be included, but the reasons for the phone’s existence, will always be its minimalist approach.
In the competitive cell phone marketplace, most phones try to outdo each other with a tighter, more compact series of fancier and more complex features. Jitterbug’s march in the opposite direction, toward simplicity, has made it stand out and, consequentially, gain some substantial attention. The Caregiver Friendly Award, the American Society on Aging’s Award for Best Small Business, and a score of other awards and recognitions for the company’s leadership has confirmed that this unique approach has paid off.
GreatCall is located in Del Mar, CA. For more information, please visit www.jitterbug.com.
Connecting to Facebook