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NAIPC® News
August 7, 2013

In This Week's Issue
  • New Aging in Place Website Makes Finding In-Home Care Easier
  • An Enlightening Tale of Caregiving
  • Innovative Models for Offering Resident Services
  • Upcoming Events

New Aging in Place Website Makes Finding In-Home Care Easier

National Council Focused on Providing Access and Formulating Policy
August 7, 2013—For the 90% of American seniors who prefer to live as long as they can in their homes, the brand new ageinplace.org website offers easy access to the services they need all across the country.
 
The smoothly navigable site, a service of the National Aging in Place Council®, directs you to local service providers near your home in numerous ways, including entering your hometown, zip code or a specific service. In 16 American cities, you can also find a local chapter of members offering a whole menu of local services. Services are available in more than 20 categories including in-home health care, geriatric care management, adult day care, elder law, financial advice, transportation or even arrangement of your papers and daily affairs.
 
Service provider listings are accompanied by a local google map to help consumers find them if they so choose. And each member company not only has a listing, but also a full page to share information about their business.
 
“Our primary mission is to make it as easy as possible for aging Americans to access the services they need to feel safe and comfortable at home,” says Marty Bell, NAIPC® Executive Director. “In a complicated world, we have devoted this site to simplifying.”
 
The National Aging in Place Council® is comprised of service providers all across America who have joined together to create awareness of the increasingly popular aging in place movement and all its component parts.  The new site also contains a members-only section that provides the latest news and information on developments in the aging sector to participants.
 
In addition to serving aging Americans in local communities, NAIPC® is focused on formulating and advocating federal, state and community policies to help people age in place. A recent Annual Meeting of the membership produced suggestions for such policies in housing, health, finance, transportation and entertainment that will be discussed by thought leaders at an Aging in Place Summit on October 16 in Washington, D.C.
 
“Our hope is that ageinplace.org will be the virtual hub of the overall movement,” says Bell, “a valuable gathering place for America’s aging persons, their children and the businesses that serve them.”

An Enlightening Tale of Caregiving
By Marty Bell

Author Jane Heller is a literary entertainer whom, after 13 comic novels, has taken on as a subject the anguish of providing care to a loved one and yet somehow manages to tell her non-fiction compassionate tale with the humor that is her trademark.  In You’d Better Not Die or I’ll Kill You: A Caregiver’s Survival Guide to Keeping You In Good Health and Good Spirits, Heller takes us through nearly 20 years of the practical and emotional struggle of being right there at every moment for her husband Michael as he battles Crohn’s disease.  Jane and Michael are very brave people and reading their story--a love story set against the romantic backdrop of hospital wards--will make you feel braver.
 
I confess Jane and I have been friends for more years than she would want me to tell. (Hint: We attended an Ali-Frazier fight at Madison Square Garden together.) And I have watched her evolve as a skillful storyteller with great admiration. From early on she has been a perspicacious observer of behavior, both other peoples’ and her own. But in this book she reaches a level of raw honesty, often at her own expense, that I find rare and moving.
 
“I wanted to express (and encourage you to express) the emotions we all have when caring for a loved one but often too guilt-ridden, fearful,  or embarrassed to say what’s really on our minds,” Heller writes. And she doesn’t hold back. Emotions fly at you; responses to doctors, nurses, supposed friends, family who should know better, healers, dealers, religious shpielers, even Michael. And all of it accompanied by a chorus of other amateur caregivers sharing their own emotional battles.
 
Caregiving is a topic du jour as the Boomers approach that age while still supporting children finding their way and parents living longer than anyone imagined. We’re told 70 percent of aging Americans need in-home care at some point, but who’s going to supply it? All of us, apparently--making You’d Better Not Die or I’ll Kill You a mandatory read.

Innovative Models for Offering Resident Services
Pairing housing with resident services is a trend that is truly gaining momentum, and for good reason. The benefits of offering services through housing, particularly for seniors wishing to age in place, are invaluable: it enriches the lives of seniors, strengthens communities, improves the health of seniors, and provides seniors with resources and education.
 
And it doesn't have to cost a lot. Housing organizations across the country have spearheaded this movement by coming up with creative ways to offer resident services, as explained in an August 2013 article published in Tax Credit Advisor, “There are different models for providing resident services. Owners/managers may provide services directly, seek outside providers to furnish the services for free or compensation, or a combination of the two. Owners, particularly nonprofits, try as much as they can to get other nonprofits or public agencies to provide the services for free, or just a modest fee to residents such as for meals.”
 
Providing resident services benefits the owners/managers as well; it serves as an incentive for prospective new tenants and current tenants, resulting in fewer empty units and lower turnover rates. A win-win situation.
 
To read more, click here.

Upcoming Events
  • August 14, 2013: Long Island Chapter Meeting
  • August 27, 2013: Council of Chapters Meeting
  • August 28, 2013: Minneapolis/St. Paul Chapter Meeting
  • October 15-21, 2013: National Aging in Place Week
  • October 16, 2013: Aging in Place Summit (Washington, DC)

To view all NAIPC® Events, click here.
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