We’re Not in January Anymore

During his January 1941 inaugural address—presented as the world found itself on the brink of World War II—President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked all Americans to take one simple action: “to pause for a moment and take stock, to recall what our place in history has been, and to rediscover what we are and what we may be.”

I tried my best to follow this advice in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic. After pausing and taking stock, it was clear to me that all of us—LeadingAge, its members, and the entire field of long-term services and supports (LTSS)—had been thrust into a singular moment in history. We suddenly found ourselves working on the frontlines of the most vicious pandemic in over a century.

The trauma we experienced and the challenges we faced over the past 9 months helped us all rediscover what we are: mission-driven organizations with a deep appreciation for the value of every life under our care.

Now, it’s time to imagine, in the words of FDR, “what we may be” when this health crisis is over.

We need this kind of imagining now more than ever. We are not going back to where we were before COVID-19 turned our lives upside down. Every flaw and crack in our public health, health care, and LTSS systems has been exposed. The fractures are too great to patch back together. It’s time, as the poet Leslie Dwight tell us, to “Declare change. Work for change. Become the change.”

During my keynote address at the LeadingAge Annual Meeting Virtual Experience, I asked members to imagine a different world. I offered my dreams for what that world might look like:

Funding and regulations would be malleable and flexible enough so that older adults could create their own program or package, care models would mold to individual needs, and transitions between and among services would be seamless and natural.

Direct care workers would be treated like the skilled professionals they are, and we would acknowledge the mental strain, as well as the physical strain, of their jobs.

A safe and affordable place to live would be a right, and no older adult would be left homeless or under-housed.

Every older adult in every corner of the country would have equal access to affordable, quality care and coverage delivered with cultural understanding and professional competence.

A focus on elder justice would result in a dramatic reversal in incidences of elder abuse.

Dramatic shifts in attitude about older adults would lead to more empathy, understanding, and respect—and help us finally accept and tackle the many examples of ageism in society.

We would all develop a deeper understanding of our differences and learn to respect and admire our neighbors for who they are.

Policymakers would have the political will to develop a system to pay for LTSS in a fair and rational way.

The year 2020 has been a horrendous one in so many ways. But I believe it also offers us an unprecedented opportunity. As leaders in a crucial sector of our economy, we now have an opportunity to decide what kind of LTSS system we want to create—to reinvent our field for the future.

We have an opportunity to apply our collective imagination to this task. I’ve shared with you my ideas, dreams, and vision. Now, I’m asking you to do the same. I look forward to combining all of our ideas and dreams into a collective vision for our different future.

Certainly, we have steep hills to climb. But I also know that this community of LeadingAge is up to the task. We can be the driving force for dramatic changes at the federal, state, and local levels. Our new job is to be catalysts for change.

Intro:

President & CEO Katie Smith Sloan invites you to share your ideas and dreams for our different future.

Associated Blog:

Conversations with Katie

People who have lived through a traumatic experience often seek out support groups where they can connect with others who’ve gone through the same ordeal. They look to their peers for assurances that they are not alone, and to find tools to help them recover.

Facing our trauma—and talking about our pain—is never easy. But when we do it together, as LeadingAge members did last week during the first days of our Annual Meeting Virtual Experience, it can be incredibly moving—and healing.

Coming together with members after all these months had a powerful effect on me. Like many of you, I had tears in my eyes as I listened to LeadingAge Board Chair Carol Silver Elliott so poignantly describe the trauma we’ve all experienced during 2020. It was such a relief to acknowledge our shared sadness, brokenness, and weariness.

I sensed a profound unity among us. It became clear that, despite our physical distance over the past 9 months, we’ve been united in our fear and frustration, as we tried to understand the coronavirus and keep residents and team members safe. Some of us faced our own personal struggles with the virus. All of us still grieve for the many residents and clients who lost their lives to COVID-19.

I also felt a sense of triumph. Yes, we went through hell—we are still going through hell as the virus surges around the country. But we showed up every day, we did our jobs, we fought the good fight for older adults—whether we carried out our work in nursing homes, assisted living communities, congregate housing settings, community-based agencies, state capitols, or the halls of Congress. We did good work that mattered. And the world is better for it.

Finally, I felt a strong sense of resolve after listening to keynote speaker Brené Brown, a nationally recognized researcher and writer who studies leadership, courage, and vulnerability. Brené reminded us that it’s okay to feel weary, wobbly, and uncertain. She urged us to embrace and own those feelings. But she also challenged us to keep the faith, keep trying, and keep practicing courageous leadership.

We’ve all been courageous in so many ways over the past few months, as we made hard decisions, fought for needed resources, and led our organizations through dark days. But Brené called on us to have a very specific kind of courage—the courage to face our own frailties and to acknowledge the frailties of our team; the courage to offer and take advantage of opportunities for healing.

Being a courageous leader means inviting team members to tell us that they’re sad, depressed, stressed, burned out, or dealing with challenging life issues. It means admitting our own vulnerabilities. It means taking care of ourselves and helping our teams do the same.

Brené’s advice was simple and practical. Practice asking each team member a simple question each day: “How are you feeling right now?”

It’s a risky conversation starter, make no mistake about it. We might open the door to issues we don’t know how to resolve. We might have to admit that our team members aren’t “okay.” We might have to take steps to help those individuals. But these conversations, just like the conversations we had during the Annual Meeting’s first week, represent the only way to bring about real healing. And we all need to heal from what we’ve experienced during 2020.

During the remaining months of the pandemic, and beyond, we all must takes steps to ensure that our organizational cultures allow team members to find meaningful support during challenging times. It takes courage to shed a bright light on what Brené calls our “collective vulnerability.” It takes courage to acknowledge, as she urges us to do, that none of us will be okay until we’re all okay.

That’s what courageous leadership is all about. And, as Brené told us in no uncertain terms, courageous leadership is our job right now.

Intro:

We all need to heal from what we’ve experienced during 2020, writes President & CEO Katie Smith Sloan.

Associated Blog:

Conversations with Katie

COVID-19 statistics have taken my breath away more than once during the past 9 months. Like you, I’m still finding it very hard to wrap my mind around the high death toll among older adults.

Data on the COVID death rates among older people of color just add to the surreal nature of this pandemic. The sheer number of deaths among Black and Latino older adults is staggering. But when we begin to dig deeper into the reasons behind the numbers, those statistics become even harder to bear.

A Kaiser Health News analysis of statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that older Black Americans ages 65 to 74 are 5 times as likely to die of COVID-19 than white Americans. Death rates for Hispanic elders are higher than for white older adults, but lower than for Black older adults.

How could this be?

Research conducted before the pandemic shows that health disparities among older adults are not new. Throughout their lives, Black and Latino older adults have had poorer access to high-quality health care. And that makes it more likely they will develop chronic medical conditions like diabetes that put them at heightened risk of becoming seriously ill and dying from COVID-19.

Addressing these issues means making “health equity” an important national goal—that is, taking concrete steps to ensure that all Americans, no matter what their age, race, or locale, have the opportunity to live the healthiest life possible.

A national effort to promote health equity would change the lives of many Americans, including older people of color, those living in poverty, those with low health literacy, and those who are socially isolated. It could improve the health picture of entire communities of people who now lack access to health-related resources like neighborhood grocery stores and pharmacies, transportation, and community-based health services, including aging services.

A number of LeadingAge members have a long-standing commitment to bringing vital health and social services to the most vulnerable among us; others have recently widened their lens and stretched their missions to do this work. The work can take many forms, depending on the unique issues facing local communities. It might involve reaching out to people with behavioral health issues or addictions who would otherwise go without needed services, offering support to elders experiencing domestic violence, providing elders with access to healthy foods, and so many other life-changing initiatives.

For the past 4 years, LeadingAge has been working with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) to celebrate the work of members who are addressing these health equity issues at the local level. Our goal in presenting the annual RWJF Award for Health Equity is to recognize members who are doing this good work, while also giving other members the inspiration and direction they need to carry out similar initiatives.

If you’re already on the path to promoting health equity, I congratulate you—and encourage you to nominate a colleague for the RWJF Award for Health Equity before Nov. 13. If you’re still planning your health equity strategies, I invite you to find inspiration in the stories of LeadingAge members who have received this award since 2017.

The pandemic has shown us, all too clearly, just how important it is to promote health equity in our local communities. It’s time—long past time—for all of us to develop workable strategies to make sure all older people have equal access to services and supports that could help them stay healthy.

The stakes—for our elders and for our nation—could not be higher.

Intro:

The pandemic has shown us, all too clearly, the need to promote health equity for vulnerable elders, writes President & CEO Katie Smith Sloan.

Associated Blog:

Conversations with Katie

Economist Milton Friedman once wrote that “only a crisis—real or perceived—produces real change.”

We’re still in the middle of the crisis called COVID. I know you still struggle to meet the unprecedented challenges that this deadly virus throws at you every single day. But even in the midst of our present danger, we can’t lose sight of the future or stop working to make sure this crisis produces real change.

A few months ago, LeadingAge sponsored a virtual visioning workshop designed to give members a chance to step away from COVID for a few hours and ask questions about the long-term futures of their organizations and our field. To be honest, not one workshop participant really stepped away from COVID. We quickly agreed that COVID will define our future, just as it now defines our present.

We used that insight to ponder the many themes that have emerged during this pandemic—themes that every LeadingAge member should be thinking about, and strategizing about, with their boards and management teams. Here are just a few:

The role of community: The importance of community continues to loom large during this pandemic, whether we are lamenting the closure of our buildings to visitors or awed by the teamwork and mutual aid that are helping us get through these dark times. It is now abundantly clear just how much we all rely on our communities, whether those communities include people who live in the same place, do the same work, or share common interests and goals. Communities of all kinds help us do our best work.

So here’s the question:

How can we strengthen our organizations by expanding our view of community? Can we build communities that include people of all generations living inside and outside our walls? Can we create networks with other organizations? Can we reach out to others who share our values?

The role of care: The pandemic has motivated all of us to focus squarely on our health and wellness, favoring prevention over care. This is good news for everyone.

But it raises these questions:

Are our organizations doing enough to help residents, clients, and team members pursue their own wellness? Are we providing support to the whole person? Are we focusing on the health, social, spiritual, emotional, nutrition, and housing needs of all whose lives we touch? Are we designing our policies and practices—and even our buildings—to support those needs?

The role of communication: The pandemic has reinforced how important the public trust is, and how fragile that trust can be in the midst of a crisis. Trust takes years to build and seconds to erode. This year, we increased our communication with a variety of stakeholders—residents, clients, families, regulators, policymakers, and the media, to name a few. We learned that good communication, and the transparency it enables, can help us earn the public trust every single day.

Now, we must ask ourselves:

How can we continue working to strengthen our communications when the current crisis is over? How can we translate the lessons we’ve learned in 2020 into ongoing efforts to communicate—frequently and transparently—with a variety of audiences?

There’s a common theme here, of course: we’ve learned lots of lessons over the past 8 months. Granted, they have been hard lessons. But they are also evergreen lessons that can be applied outside of a crisis, and will surely be relevant long after this pandemic is over.

But first, we need to translate those lessons into better practices, better business models, and better operations for today and for the future. We can do that by being resilient, imaginative, and innovative.

When the coronavirus makes its retreat, our organizations will still be here, still committed to our long-term mission to provide high-quality, holistic, community-building, transparent services and supports to a rapidly growing older population.

In the meantime, we have a critical, short-term mission: to get ready for life after COVID. Asking the right questions now, and imagining a better future to come, may just help us emerge from the pandemic in better shape than we went into it.

Intro:

President & CEO Katie Smith Sloan poses some questions LeadingAge members should ask themselves before the pandemic comes to an end.

Associated Blog:

Conversations with Katie

COVID-19 is our “chief transformation officer.”

That’s how Susheel Ladwa, CEO of Onyx Health, described the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on providers of aging services. His remarks came during the Collaborative Care HIT Summit, which the LeadingAge Center for Aging Services Technologies (CAST) held 2 weeks ago.

The virtual gathering was one of the first opportunities we’ve had to come together and take stock of COVID-19’s impact on the field of aging services. And, despite the dire circumstances in which we find ourselves during this pandemic, the presenters brought a hopeful tone to the online gathering.

Their key message? COVID-19 has changed everything for providers of aging services. But there’s a way to transform many of those changes into opportunities.

One change, and its corresponding opportunity, caught my attention: the pandemic-inspired fear of congregate settings among elders and their families.

This fear extends to all congregate settings, not just nursing homes and assisted living communities. Older consumers and their families also fear apartment buildings, public transit, hospitals, and emergency rooms, according to Bob Kramer, president of Nexus Insights and founder of NIC—the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing and Care.

Bob believes our field can address those fears, but it will entail dramatic changes in how we carry out our missions. For example, we can respond to the fear of hospitals and emergency rooms by taking deliberate steps to actively manage the chronic conditions of residents and clients so they can avoid health emergencies that lead to 911 calls.

LeadingAge members implementing housing plus services strategies know that good partnerships with healthcare providers are essential to carrying out any preventive health strategy. But Bob and Susheel maintain that we also need technology to help us pursue prevention.

We’re already seeing an explosion of technology use within our organizations due to the pandemic. Over the past 6 months, telemedicine has become an essential tool in helping quarantined residents connect with their healthcare providers. Older adults battling social isolation have enthusiastically adopted technologies that foster social connections.

There’s no going back from these technology advances. But we can’t stop there.

Quantum computing, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things must also become integral parts of every aging services organization. We’ll need these tools to track changing conditions and prevent adverse outcomes, like falls and hospitalizations, among residents and clients in all settings. And we’ll need them fast.

Technology is evolving faster than we can imagine or perceive. Fahad Aziz, co-founder of Caremerge, predicts that the technologies we struggle to wrap our minds around in 2020 will become so prevalent by 2030 that those who fail to adopt them will be left behind.

LeadingAge is committed to leaving no one behind. That’s why LeadingAge CAST sponsored the Collaborative Care Summit, and why it has developed myriad resources to help you learn more about emerging technologies, select technologies that best fit your organization, and use those technologies to improve the lives of residents and clients.

To make the best use of these great resources, LeadingAge members must develop what Fahad calls “Innovation DNA” throughout their organizations.

Organizations with Innovation DNA promote a culture that is open to new ideas. They encourage team members to identify problems and then find solutions. They are determined to take advantage of all the possibilities, technological and otherwise, that have come to light during the pandemic. They resolve to experiment, to take risks, and to always be learning.

I urge you to begin developing your Innovation DNA. Harnessing technology within an innovation culture is one of the best ways I know to move through this pandemic with hope for a brighter future.

Intro:

President & CEO Katie Smith Sloan urges aging services organizations to develop “Innovation DNA” during the pandemic.

Associated Blog:

Conversations with Katie

It’s been gratifying to hear news reporters and policy makers describe direct care workers as “essential” during the coronavirus pandemic.

I’m glad people outside our field are finally giving certified nursing assistants and home health aides the recognition they deserve for offering life-sustaining care and daily support to people who are older, live with disabilities, or have complex medical needs. But I can’t ignore a disturbing disconnect between words and actions.

Frontline workers may be receiving kudos on the evening news, but they still lack financial and professional support in the workplace. Frankly, I wonder how we as a nation can deem direct care workers “essential” when so many still view these workers as low-skilled people doing a job we don’t really value and in which we are unwilling to invest.

LeadingAge has been trying to fix this disconnect for many years. We’ve worked hard to strengthen the direct care workforce so more people will join our field and enjoy long and meaningful careers within aging services organizations.

We have much more work to do.

That work took a giant leap forward on Labor Day when LeadingAge published Making Care Work Pay, a report describing groundbreaking research on the substantial benefits that would accrue throughout our economy if direct care workers earned at least a living wage.

Using publicly available data and standard economic simulation techniques, LeadingAge researchers found that higher wages would benefit not only direct care workers, but also the direct care field, care recipients, and the economies of local communities in which direct care workers live. The overall price tag for the wage increases would be relatively modest, and those increases would actually pay for themselves through lower turnover and higher productivity.

I am very excited about this research. It provides LeadingAge with a strong foundation on which to build a broad action plan designed to strengthen our field by professionalizing the role of direct care workers. We’ll be finalizing that action plan over the next few months as we continue to study the research findings and confer with our partners and colleagues. But it will likely contain these elements:

Advocating strongly for more government support to finance a wage increase for direct care workers. We fully recognize that paying direct care workers higher wages will require an investment on the part of government, which will need to pay more to providers so those providers can pay more to direct care workers.
Raising awareness among policy makers at the state and federal levels about the widespread beneficial impact of these wage increases.
Promoting the importance of robust training in competencies that workers must master so they can carry out increasingly complex jobs.
Seeking support for programs through which direct care workers can earn career-building credentials.
Envisioning new career paths that direct care workers can follow to become leaders in our field.

Over the next year, LeadingAge will focus squarely on improving the lives of direct care workers, demonstrating the value of the work they do, and making it easier for you to recruit and retain skilled workers.

Paying a living wage to direct care workers is a critical first step in all of that work—and a critical step in ensuring that a highly skilled direct care workforce will be there to support our growing older population for many years to come.

I look forward to working with you to take decisive action on the workforce issues that are so important to you and the people you serve. I hope we can count on your support as we embark on this exciting mission.

Intro:

President & CEO Katie Smith Sloan describes new research that will help LeadingAge professionalize the role of direct care workers.

Associated Blog:

Conversations with Katie

LeadingAge members have wonderful stories to tell about the important and impressive work they do each day.

This month, LeadingAge took a giant step forward in our multi-year effort to back up those great stories with great data. We released Portrait of Our Members, a report filled with the valuable data we collected during our 2019 Member Survey.

I hope you’ll take a few minutes to read this report. In addition, don’t miss the data snapshots that zero-in on findings from the 5 settings the survey explored: nursing homes, assisted living, affordable housing, market-rate independent living, and home and community-based services.

The survey report gives us all a great opportunity to learn more about the LeadingAge membership. A few highlights stand out for me:

Our continuum: The survey reinforced how squarely LeadingAge represents the entire continuum of services and supports for older adults.

Our size: The LeadingAge membership includes organizations of all sizes. Assisted living communities tend to be the largest organizations in terms of the number of people served. Nursing homes are the smallest.

Our residents: Residents served by affordable housing communities and adult day programs tend to be younger and more racially and ethnically diverse than residents in other settings.

Our services: The breadth of services provided by LeadingAge members is truly impressive. Depending on the setting, services are provided either directly by members, or through arrangements with others.

Our technology use: In 2019, half of our nursing homes offered technologies that support social connections. This was long before the coronavirus pandemic made these technologies so essential. My guess is that the presence of these technologies has grown considerably since the beginning of 2020.

Over the course of our almost 60 years, the LeadingAge membership has changed a great deal. We started out as an association comprised primarily of nursing homes. Today, we embrace the continuum fully and completely. That’s quite an accomplishment—and quite a tribute to our members who have evolved over time to meet the changing needs of older consumers.

I look forward to learning how our membership will continue to evolve in the coming years as LeadingAge uses future surveys to build on the valuable baseline data we collected in 2019.

Intro:

LeadingAge President & CEO Katie Sloan shares some highlights from the 2019 LeadingAge Member Survey.

Associated Blog:

Conversations with Katie

It’s so easy to feel paralyzed as we face the hard truths about systemic racism in America. After all, what can one person or one organization do to reverse the social injustice that has permeated American culture for hundreds of years?

This question has kept me up at night.

Part of my distress has been personal. Like many Americans, I find it hard to reconcile the fact that I’ve enjoyed the privilege of whiteness throughout my own life, while millions of Americans have been denied rights and opportunities—and suffered daily humiliations—due to the color of their skin.

Part of my distress has been professional. Even before George Floyd’s death, LeadingAge has grappled with how to address the social justice issues that have gained such prominence in our world this year. The problem is so large and complex. In light of the overwhelming need for change, any potential solution seems inadequate.

Until now.

After much fruitful discussion, LeadingAge decided to take 2 immediate steps to address the issues raised by the Black Lives Matter movement. Other steps are under development and I look forward to sharing those with you at a later date.

First, we decided to hold a mirror up to ourselves. LeadingAge wants to learn and grow alongside our members. We’re committed to doing the important and necessary work to ensure that LeadingAge is an inclusive organization. A staff Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Council is guiding our work. Recognizing racial equity as a crucial starting point for this work, the council’s purpose is to identify and engage resources that will build our internal awareness, educate, and inform recommended actions.

Second, we decided to focus on the painful recognition that we have tremendous disparities within our organizations. One need only look at the composition of our C-suites and board rooms, and contrast that with the composition of our front-line workforce.

To address these disparities, we are launching a new LeadingAge Summer Enrichment Program in the summer of 2021. Through the 10-week program, undergraduate and graduate students of color can advance toward leadership positions in LeadingAge member organizations, the offices of LeadingAge state partners, and within our LeadingAge national office. Summer interns will complete a substantive project within one of these organizations, work with mentors to hone their leadership skills, and take part in a variety of leadership development activities.

LeadingAge will be there every step of the way, providing resources to help you design and implement your internship program, disseminating information nationwide about the Summer Enrichment Program, promoting your internship opportunity, and offering interns and preceptors myriad opportunities for professional development, education, training, and networking.

I hope you will begin preparing today to participate in this national effort to make our field as diverse, inclusive, and welcoming as possible. The summer of 2021 may seem a long way off. But now is the time to include funds for an intern in your 2021 budget.

I’ve already included $5,000 in the LeadingAge National budget to cover the stipend we intend to pay our Summer Enrichment Program intern in 2021.

LeadingAge is making a financial commitment to the Summer Enrichment Program because it’s the right thing to do. And it’s something we can do right now to begin righting the wrongs that systemic racism has visited upon our country.

LeadingAge also knows this program will strengthen all of our organizations. Studies have shown that organizations are strongest when their leaders come from diverse backgrounds and bring diverse perspectives to the decision-making process.

I look forward to working with you to make sure our leaders reflect the diversity of our nation, the diversity of the aging population, and the diversity of the direct care professionals who work in aging services organizations.

Will the LeadingAge Summer Enrichment Program eradicate systemic racism? Not alone.

But I’m convinced that, working together, we can use this important initiative to change our little corner of the world. For now, that’s an important first step.

Intro:

LeadingAge President and CEO Katie Smith Sloan introduces the new LeadingAge Summer Enrichment Program, which will help members prepare a diverse group of students to become leaders in our field.

Associated Blog:

Conversations with Katie

The nightly television news over the past week in Washington, DC and around the country featured 2 strong images that will come to epitomize our summer of 2020.

The first image: Congressional leaders of both parties, standing at their respective podiums, bickering and debating the pros and cons of the second coronavirus relief bill, officially known as the HEALS Act.

The second image: Hurricane Isaias making its way to the Florida coast, and then leaving a path of destruction up the East Coast, through the nation’s capital, and onward to New England.

Listening to Isaias’s rain battering my own house in Washington brought home the chilling words of Steve Bahmer, president & CEO of LeadingAge Florida.

"If the coronavirus were a hurricane, it would be a Category-5,” he told a gathering of media representatives last Thursday on Zoom.

That COVID hurricane has arrived, Steve warned. It has already brought disastrous outcomes to the most vulnerable in its path. Over 442,000 positive cases of coronavirus in Florida alone. Over 6,000 deaths in that state, 45% of which have occurred in the long-term care setting.

And yet, the government officials who are typically on the front lines of natural disasters—visiting flooded neighborhoods and urging immediate relief for hurricane victims—are nowhere to be seen in the wake of the COVID hurricane. They are bickering about solutions, rather than throwing COVID-19 victims and first responders the lifelines they desperately need. And the situation just gets worse and worse.

We are experiencing this COVID hurricane throughout the country, but particularly in “hot-spot” states like Arizona, Texas, New Jersey, North Carolina, and Florida. LeadingAge members from each of those states were on our call last week to share with reporters their own stories of struggle and frustration.

Pam Koester, CEO of Arizona LeadingAge, reported that her members, on average, are spending over $67,000 per month on COVID-related personal protective equipment (PPE) and $600,000 on testing, all out of their own pockets without any help from the federal government. George Linial, president & CEO of LeadingAge Texas, warned that these extraordinary costs may force some members to close their doors.

Everyone on the call told stories of desperate need, and all shared their frustration that the HEALS Act does not go nearly far enough to meet that need, chiefly because it:

Includes no funds dedicated to aging services providers.
Offers only a fraction of the $100 billion dollars needed to protect older adults from COVID-19.
Does not address the needs of more than 750,000 older adults living in HUD-assisted housing.
Contains inadequate testing provisions, and no comprehensive and coordinated national testing strategy.
Responds insufficiently to the urgent immediate need for PPE.
Offers no Hero’s Pay for frontline workers.

The bottom line? Congress needs to deliver more.

Stephen Fleming, president & CEO of The Well•Spring Group in North Carolina, summed up the dilemma in terms LeadingAge members can appreciate. Lack of testing and PPE are putting the physical safety of older people at risk. But lack of federal support for testing and PPE is also having a devastating effect on the emotional well-being of elders and their families. It’s a problem we could fix with help from Washington. But Washington is not acting.

“Without testing, we cannot have visitation,” Steve told reporters. “What do we say to families who are at our doorsteps begging to see their loved one? To deny (residents) the basic human right of socialization because we cannot as a society come up with personal protective equipment or testing is wrong.”

Wrong indeed. And when will it change? Only when Congress acts to provide the funds providers need to conduct rapid-result testing, to protect their workers and residents, and to compensate direct care workers for putting their lives on the line each day.

Each of the members on our call had a final, personal message, which they directed to their senators, calling them by name. The messages were clear.

Don’t abandon us. Be a leader in this fight.

It’s time all of us sent similar messages to our elected leaders, don’t you think?

Intro:

Katie Smith Sloan, LeadingAge President & CEO, wants to know why government leaders are abandoning us during the COVID hurricane.

Associated Blog:

Conversations with Katie

You probably remember the moment in the 1939 classic film, The Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy Gale emerges from her old house, looks around her new technicolor world, and informs her dog, “I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”

I had a similar feeling last week during the quarterly meeting of the LeadingAge Board of Directors. If my dog had been nearby, I might have told him, “I have a feeling we’re not in January anymore.”

During our Zoom meeting, we approved a strategic plan that board members and LeadingAge staff have been working on since January.

Not surprising, the monumental changes we’ve experienced over the past 6 months gave all of us a different view of the planning assumptions we’d made at the beginning of the year. Some of those assumptions no longer fit our current reality. They weren’t bad assumptions for January. But they weren’t the best assumptions for July.

So, as we prepared for the board meeting, board chair Carol Silver Elliott and I decided to follow the advice we’ve been giving LeadingAge members since the coronavirus invaded our world.

We adapted. We exercised the kind of flexibility that these times demand. We remembered that every successful strategic planning process must be dynamic. And then we decided to ask the board to adapt the strategic plan to reflect new realities.

The strategic plan approved last week identifies 4 outcomes that LeadingAge will work to achieve during the next 3 years to help us equip and position members for success, advance models that respond to a diversity of needs and preferences, and leverage the strengths of aging services providers for greater impact.

Board members agreed that we can’t pretend COVID-19 will be a distant memory when the new fiscal year begins on Oct. 1. We could very well be dealing with the pandemic and its aftermath for a good part of the next 3 years. Likewise, long-standing racial justice issues, brought into the spotlight by the Black Lives Matter movement, will continue to be relevant to our organizations for a long time to come.

To help us navigate these challenging times, the strategic plan calls for an increased focus on “governance, diversity, equity, and inclusion within LeadingAge member organizations.” These elements had been part of initial drafts, but gained increased prominence as events unfolded.

The plan also calls LeadingAge to focus, over the next 3 years, on supporting the continuum of aging services providers who find themselves operating in a rapidly changing environment. In addition, the plan directs us to focus on designing and developing a stronger, more effective system of accessible, affordable services for the post-COVID world—a system that is responsive to a diverse aging population.

You’ll be hearing much more about this agenda over the next few months. It’s ambitious, for sure. And it underscores for me the resilience of our board and the resilience of LeadingAge.

That resilience is what made last week’s board discussion and action so noteworthy. By continuing our strategic planning process, even through the pandemic, the board sent a powerful message that aging services organizations need to continue looking to the future even as we continue to navigate today’s challenges.

Board members also gave us all a good example of how to conduct planning during a pandemic. They were willing to admit that “we’re not in January anymore.” They weren’t afraid to let go of outdated assumptions. And they felt free to re-imagine our organization’s path.

We’re feeling resilient at LeadingAge. We hope, over the next 3 years, we can help you feel the same way.

Associated Blog:

Conversations with Katie

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