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| Jeff Johnson |
An October 2019 AARP study on caregiving in Florida included some jaw-dropping statistics: Florida now has 2.9 million unpaid family caregivers, who contribute some 2.4 billion hours of care per year to elders.
As state lawmakers convene today for the 2020 Florida legislative session, our Coalition for Silver Solutions is urging them to support a strong continuum of care, starting with those family caregivers and including high quality of care for frail elders in home-and-community-based care settings, assisted-living facilities and nursing homes.
The coalition is an unprecedented alliance committed to providing Florida’s elected leaders with a roadmap to improve aging in Florida, the nation’s grayest state. CSS includes leaders of for-profit and nonprofit nursing homes, the state’s largest health-care worker union and AARP Florida, working on behalf of older and adult disabled consumers.
Today we’re focusing on detailed recommendations for strengthening care for those 2.9 million family caregivers — the backbone of elder care in Florida:
• Help unpaid family caregivers avoid crisis: Family caregivers often must bear heavy physical, emotional and financial responsibilities. Those shouldering the heaviest responsibilities often are age 50 and older. When caregivers collapse under the strain, very often public programs end up paying for more extensive home-based care or care in nursing homes.
We recommend that Florida better assess the needs of people who need long-term care, including a more comprehensive assessment of family caregivers’ capacities. This is one of several key provisions included in bipartisan House and Senate legislation, including SB 1544 by Sen. Ben Albritton, R-Bartow.
• Bring realism to Florida’s elder-care waiting list: Currently, more than 74,000 elders have been placed on waiting lists for home or community care. People on those lists receive an annual evaluation by state staff, ranking them on a five-point scale according to need. Because state funding is limited, most people who rank in the lowest two levels of need will never receive support services. The coalition recommends that persons ranked in those lowest levels forgo automatic annual reassessments and be reassessed only upon request when their circumstances change sufficiently.
• Ensure fairness in placement and service decisions: CSS also recommends that Community-Care-for-the-Elderly service providers have a process to negotiate placement and service decisions by Adult Protective Services, which is charged with identifying and obtaining services for elder adults who experience abuse, neglect and exploitation. CCE’s local budgets must bear the costs for those services and the providers often have clients whose needs match or exceed those for APS referrals.
If we are lucky, we’ll all grow older. We all will need a strong continuum of long-term-care services, be it in homes, in communities or in residential care facilities.
Florida must be the “caregiver” for its caregivers. For more information, please go to silversolutionscoalition.org.
Jeff Johnson is AARP’s Florida state director. Joining in this statement are Emmett Reed, executive director of the Florida Health Care Association; Steve Bahmer, president and CEO of LeadingAge Florida; and Roxey Nelson, director of politics and strategic campaigns for 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East — Florida.
Full Article & Source:
GUEST EDITORIAL: Florida’s caregivers need and deserve support
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