Robert Jenkens

Robert Jenkens was at boarding school in Exeter, New Hampshire, when, in order to fulfill community service, he chose to volunteer as a buddy to an elder in a nursing home. He soon discovered he enjoyed listening to the personal stories of those who lived there, and he marveled at their rich, interesting lives.

Still, he remembers, “Every time I walked in, I thought, ‘How can anyone live here?’ It was the last area where I saw society accepting a bad quality of life, where rights were really denied. People didn’t have the ability to make choices or lead lives the way they wanted to. I thought it was a civil rights issue.” Read the full story

This is the first story in a two-part series about the unique relationship shared between a young man and his young caregiver (go to part two).

Nathan Herman and Dylan Marriner

Nathan and Dylan could be any two dudes in their early 20s, hanging out beneath band posters in their hoodie jackets and ironic T-shirts, chatting away their afternoons about music, video games, and cult-classic films.

They certainly don’t look like the future of caregiving in America — but that’s exactly what they could be.  Read the full story

Steve Shields

Steve Shields’ journey from heading up a long-shore drilling operation in the Middle East to becoming a key player in the eldercare culture change movement began with the loss of his mother.

In the mid-80s, his mother had advanced Alzheimer’s and his father had Parkinson’s, two “headline diseases,” as he calls them. So, Shields went home to Kansas to help.

“The options available to them were dismal,” he remembers. Read the full story

Rep. Gwen Moore (D-WI)

Along with many economists and advocacy organizations, Rep.  Gwen Moore (D-WI) wants to see women’s poverty placed at the very top of the nation’s agenda. And she has exerted her political power as a U.S. representative to pursue this goal by advocating for the inclusion of women in President Obama’s economic stimulus package.

Moore’s passion for supporting low-income women is not just political but personal — She was a teenaged mother who lived on government assistance. Now she’s fighting to narrow the wage gap and increase post-secondary education for women on welfare. Thanks to a writeup at WomensEnews.org, we caught wind of the comments she delivered at the Democratic National Convention on women and poverty, and we tracked her down this week as she was on her way to cast votes in the House. Read the full story

Dr. Jack Resnick

While making house calls for the past decade on Roosevelt Island, a small planned community famous for the aerial cable car that connects it to Manhattan,  one doctor has come to understand the importance of direct-care workers.

Dr. Jack Resnick believes that home-based care, especially with one doctor, looking out for us throughout our lives, can be done more competently and at a lower cost than institutional care. Read the full story

Dr. William Thomas

Bill Thomas calls himself “a nursing home abolitionist.”

“I want them to go away,” he says. “Our greatest adversary is the institutional mindset. That must go.”

Talk of culture change doesn’t matter as long as people retain an attitude of elders as “the helpless inmates of total institutions,” he says.

Read the full story