Blog Archives
The Village model in the press! and your lazy editor
We get daily alerts from Google on the topics Healthy Aging and Aging in Place. Lo and behold in yesterday’s updates there was this gem from the Washingtonian: More Older People Are Opting to Age in Their Homes. Here’s How…
And there’s a description of the Village model with examples, which they have plenty of, because DC has something like 12 Villages just in the confines of the city, not even counting the nearby VA and MD ‘burbs where Villages also thrive.
Your lazy editor has been working on a grant proposal and finishing off the OLLI course. The latter ended yesterday with a lot of enthusiasm from the attendees. Their numbers were somewhat diminished as we had to postpone from last Tuesday after yours truly was unwittingly exposed to COVID the previous week, but luckily never developed symptoms and never tested positive. But the conversations, questions, connections made even over a little 3 week course were rewarding.
And yes, we are recruiting for Cville Village planning committee members; it’s getting exciting now as we think about structure and function while doing this grant proposal, in light of the feedback from the course.
News that will (not) surprise you re: home health care inequity
Imagine: Black and Hispanic elders are more likely than white elders to receive in-home care from unpaid “informal caregivers,” according to this article in Home Care magazine.
It reports on a national survey of Medicare recipients by the Commonwealth Fund. The issues of concern, beyond the essential inequity, include an increased risk of inadequate care by untrained family members, and the burden imposed on those family members, who must take time off or even give up paid work to provide care.
Medicare does offer a home health benefit, although, unfortunately, it seems to be widely misunderstood. Our Cville Village will work with JABA to make sure members know what their benefits and rights are.
Still driving? Should you/they be?
One of the most fraught situations that comes up between aging parents and their adult children is determining when the parent is no longer safe to drive.
Here is some basic guidance for making that decision. No matter the circumstances, it’s almost never easy to be the ‘bad guy’ taking the keys away.
For ourselves we hope we have the sense and the grace to stop when the time has come.
And that Cville Village will be here for us then.
Excitement!
When engaged in the startup of a new nonprofit, there are many ups and downs. Today was a very, very big UP.
Why? you ask. Well, the prospect of sufficient funding to launch Cville Village in our first, pilot neighborhood is starting to look real. So join with us as we do a little virtual joy dancing around our living room!
An 8-minute phone call.
We normally ignore articles with names like “The 7-Day Happiness Challenge.”
But this New York Times Day 2 headline caught our attention: “Try the 8-minute phone call.”
Such calls are exactly w hat Cville Village volunteers will offer when we are operational! Even though the Times article refers largely to calls between good friends, it cites this article in JAMA Network Psychiatry that supports the value of phone calls just from person to person.
So let’s get our Village going!
Some thoughts after President Zelenskyy’s Congressional address
Last night in his address to Congress, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said: “Your money is not charity. It is an investment in the global security that we handle in the most responsible way.“
If we may paraphrase: so, too, money donated to Cville Village isn’t charity. It’s an investment in our community, the community we have and the one we would like to have and belong to as we ALL grow older. It’s money that we who manage Cville Village pledge to handle in a way that will grow and sustain our Village.
Holiday gift ideas for seniors
Do you already have ‘too much stuff’? We know the feeling. Yet every now and then it occurs to us that a ___________ would be useful. If you have kids who want to give you a holiday gift and you can’t think of anything you want or need, here are some ideas. If you REALLY don’t need or want anything, ask them to make a donation in your name to a worthwhile cause, like Cville Village.
CvilleVillage 