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The National Resource Center on LGBT Aging is conducting its second annual survey to elicit feedback on its efforts to reach key audiences and deliver critical services. The survey also asks for suggestions for resources to help improve the lives of LGBT older adults in the nation.

Anyone who completes the approximately 10-minute survey will be entered to win a $50 gift certificate to Amazon.com. The survey deadline is February 6.

PHI, one of the Resource Center’s 10 partners, developed curricula and a training program for aging services providers and LGBT advocacy organizations. The Resource Center on LGBT is a project of Services & Advocacy for GLBT Elders (SAGE) and is funded by the Administration on Aging.

– by Deane Beebe

The Eldercare Workforce Alliance (EWA) issued two policy briefs on the interrelationship between two critical issues facing our nation — the need for job creation and the rapidly increasing demand for a wide spectrum of health care providers trained to provide eldercare.

The EWA, a coalition of 28 national organizations, contends that investing in the eldercare workforce will also strengthen the nation’s economy.

One of the briefs, entitled Eldercare: How America’s Solution to the Jobs Crisis Can Lead to Better Care for Older Adults, reports that health care is expected to generate 3.2 million new jobs by 2018 due to the rapidly increasing elder population.

With 90 percent of people over age 65 having one or more chronic conditions, there is a growing need for interdisciplinary teams of health professionals who are trained to provide coordinated, person-centered care to help older adults live at home and in community-based settings for as long as possible.

Missed Opportunity for Meaningful Employment

Yet too few people are entering these professions and getting the training necessary to provide the kind of interdisciplinary team care that elders require — a “miss[ed] opportunity to provide meaningful employment for millions of Americans,” the brief explains.

“The direct-care workforce alone will require more than a million new employees to provide critical care to people with long-term care needs,” said EWA co-convener Steven Dawson, president of PHI, in an EWA press statement. “These positions should include comprehensive training, and offer livable wages.”

The EWA posits that attracting people to eldercare fields could generate jobs and “address our looming crisis in care.” The coalition recommends that efforts should be made to:

• provide quality care through quality jobs for direct-care workers;
• avoid recommendations that eliminate jobs, such as reducing Medicaid funding for long-term care;
• support Title VII and VIII training programs for geriatric professionals and direct-care workers; and
• maintain funding for implementation of health care workforce provisions of the Affordable Care Act.

In a second brief, Title VII and VIII Programs Preparing the Eldercare Workforce to Care for our Nation’s Older Adults, the EWA provides greater detail on the federal workforce development programs that are crucial to strengthening the eldercare workforce.

– by Deane Beebe

Direct-care workers will be among the topics at the 2011 Aging in America conference this week in San Francisco.

PHI National Policy Director Steve Edelstein will be a panelist at three featured workshops:

• Stabilizing the Direct-Care Workforce: A Policy Discussion;
• New Careers for Older Workers in the New World of Health Care; and
• Workforce Issues for a Graying America.

The annual conference, held by the American Society on Aging, gathers professionals in the fields of eldercare, health care, education, and aging for four days of policy discussion and advocacy.

The Aging in America conference also features a public policy forum conducted by the National Council on Aging.

– by Matthew Ozga

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) elders face additional challenges beyond those associated with the typical aging process, according to two new reports.

One report is a survey of LGBT elders conducted by the National Senior Citizens Law Center, an organization that advocates for low-income older adults.

In the survey, the vast majority of LGBT seniors — 89 percent — said they believed that staff members working in long-term care facilities are likely to discriminate against LGBT residents due to their sexual orientation.

Additionally, 43 percent said they had personally experienced at least once instance of mistreatment in a long-term care facility because of their sexuality.

LGBT Elders Suffer Poorer Health

The second report (pdf), issued by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, concludes that California’s aging LGBT population suffers greater rates of psychological distress, isolation, and physical health problems than heterosexuals.

Specifically, the UCLA report found that:

• A majority (50.5 percent) of older gay men in California live alone, compared with just 13.4 percent of heterosexuals.
• Lesbians are also more likely than heterosexual women to live by themselves (28.3 percent compared with 19.3 percent).
• Aging lesbians, gay men, and bisexual men and women are significantly more likely than older heterosexuals to feel psychological distress, to have a physical disability, or to be in poor health generally.
• Additionally, older gay and bisexual men are more likely to have heart disease and hypertension than aging heterosexual men.

Resource Center Could Help LGBT Elders

In the past, LGBT elders had few places to turn to for information specific to their needs. Last October, however, the organization Services & Advocacy for GLBT Elders (SAGE) — in collaboration with PHI and nine other organizations — launched the nation’s first National Resource Center on LGBT Aging.

The Resource Center recently debuted a new section devoted to resources for caregivers.

The Center also features articles, fact sheets, videos, and other resources geared toward LGBT elders, LGBT organizations, and aging providers.

– by Matthew Ozga

Working in partnership with 10 organizations, Services & Advocacy for GLBT Elders (SAGE) inaugurated the nation’s first National Resource Center on LGBT Aging, a technical assistance resource center dedicated to improving the quality of services and supports for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) older adults nationwide.

Curricula and Training

PHI was invited to become a partner in this ground-breaking initiative because of its expertise in curricula development and person-centered care training.

PHI will collaborate with SAGE and the other project partners to develop the Resource Center’s training curricula for both aging network providers and LGBT service providers.

PHI staff will also conduct train-the-trainer sessions with the Center’s core training partners and pilot testing to evaluate the effectiveness of the training curricula.

Serving the LGBT Elder Community

“Like most older adults, LGBT elders need services and supports to help them age successfully, but too often they don’t seek them from the aging service network due to fear of discrimination,” said PHI Organizational Culture Change Specialist Kate Waldo, who is working with the Resource Center and coordinating the project partners. “Yet, organizations that traditionally serve the LGBT community are often not ‘age-friendly,’ lacking the knowledge and skills necessary to serve elders.”

“PHI is addressing these profound gaps by developing curricula and providing person-directed care training that honor the whole person and celebrate diversity,” Waldo continued.

“It is critical that the aging network acknowledges that LGBT consumers are accessing their services. If it doesn’t, you are in effect making the LGBT community an invisible population that feels they have to hide an important aspect of their self-identity in order to feel safe — or go without needed services altogether,” Waldo said.

‘An Enormous Step Forward’

A key component of the new Center is its website that over time will provide LGBT elders and their loved ones with information on legal issues, caregiving, lifelong planning and housing, and other concerns.

“The launch of our National Resource Center on LGBT Aging is an enormous step forward for our aging lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities,” said Michael Adams, executive director at SAGE. “It speaks to the necessary attention that service providers of all types must place on supporting diverse older adults around the country.”

SAGE, the world’s largest and oldest organization dedicated to improving the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) older adults, launched the new Center in mid-October with a three-year grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration on Aging.

More information about the Resource Center and suggestions for further reading are available at PHI’s Training and Organizational Development Services blog.

– by Deane Beebe

Robert N. Butler, M.D., the internationally renowned “father of gerontology,” died on Sunday at the age of 83.

By rejecting the idea that older people have nothing to contribute to society — a widespread prejudice he dubbed “ageism” — Dr. Butler is credited with changing the way Americans think about aging and the elderly.

In his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Why Survive? Being Old in America, Dr. Butler spoke out against the undignified conditions in which elderly Americans are commonly expected to live.

Lifelong Commitment to Aging

Dr. Butler was a pioneer in the field of gerontology. He was the first director of the National Institute on Aging, a division of the National Institutes of Health, and was instrumental in its creation in 1975.

Dr. Butler founded the nation’s first department of geriatrics, at New York’s Mount Sinai Medical School in 1982.

He founded the International Longevity Center (ILC) in 1990, a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating Americans “on how to live longer and better, and…how to maximize the benefits of today’s age boom,” according to its website.

One of the ILC’s projects, the Caregiving Project for Older Americans, aimed to improve the quality of caregiving in the U.S. by providing training grants and helping to develop a systemic approach to the recruitment and retention of caregivers.

“Dr. Butler understood the link between quality of caregiving and the quality of life for elders,” said PHI national policy director Steve Edelstein, who worked with Butler at the ILC in the late 90′s. “His work truly embraced the ‘quality care through quality jobs’ framework.”

Personal Experiences Informed Life’s Work

Dr. Butler often said that he learned just how strong and successful older Americans could be simply by observing his grandparents, who raised him. He took this idea of “productive aging” to heart, continuing to work until his death from leukemia.

His final book, The Longevity Prescription: The 8 Proven Keys to a Long, Healthy Life, was published just weeks before he died.

Widespread Recognition

Dr. Butler’s contribution to the field of aging is vast. He wrote hundreds of articles on the subject, as well as numerous books, several of which were co-written with his late wife, Myrna Lewis, Ph.D. Dr. Lewis died in 2005.

Dr. Butler’s death was widely noted in mainstream publications, from the New York Times to the Washington Post.

In a statement, Kathleen Sebelius, the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, wrote that Dr. Butler helped “to transform a culture that too often acted as if people’s contributions to society ended on their 65th birthday.”

– by Matthew Ozga