Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Sustainable Social Structures

[Lavinia Weissman (subscriptions]

Juva,

When I last checked, Oregon was the only state that is actually changing
their actions re: the medical care of the disabled and chronically ill.
Three years ago I was in touch with the government official, who was a
nurse that built the first phase of this program, which emphasized in
transferring programs of care for people at home who were chronically ill
and developed systems of care with alternative medical providers to reduce
episodes of emergency illness that can be avoided by developing practices,
e.g. Reiki, accupuncture, massage.

>From a kinder perspective, Dr. Bill Thomas and Dr. Dean Ornish have
already proved with their research that community and a sense of belonging
to a community is one of the best healing forces for anyone ill from
episodic or ongoing need. Ornish goes so far to say a sense of love is
ultimately why and how people survive.


This may be more than people here want to hear and I believe the Cohousing
movement is pushing attention in this regard whether conscious or not.  In
fact New View in Acton MA has community members who are chronically ill
and teach or coach people on how to live and work with these illnesses as
I do.

Your point about not waiting for the government is well taken and in my
experience Oregon is the most advances with looking at these issues.

Within other states including California there are some programs that got
created as experiments or were influenced through significant ngo (non
profit organizations.

The development of Eldershire and GreenHouse activity is an example of how
forming community based conversations that grow out of training and
education.  Some of this has been created historically for people with
autism and downs syndrome.

The challenge ahead for cohousing I believe is for communities to learn or
be open to who they include and how and to do that thoughtfully. This
means you have to listen carefully to needs expressed by individuals to
see if they match your community or your community is willing to adapt to
diversity.

With the rise in creating group specific living, e.g. 55+ communities, for
men and/or women; intergenerational communities, communities that
accomodate the chronically ill, etc. I think its important to bring this
into the consensus activity so that people do not find themselves doing
what they don't want to do within a community or trying to make someone (a
round peg fit in a square hole).

One of the companies, I advise and work actively in
http://www.clinicalfocus.com historically designed it's efforts on
providing 24/7 search capability across 133 medical journals to deliver
diagnostic (primary and secondary diagnosis) information that is
patient/client specific.  We have found with the recognition that 1/3 of
the US population is now chronically ill (over 100M people) that our
market is actually outside hospital associate care.  More and more
communities, individuals, families, community clinicians are needing to
pilot our search engine capability or practice management analysis to
accomodate care at home.
A recent study completed by the Institute of Alternative Futures with Yale
on Diabetes, had an outcome that was unexpected.  The study revealed out
unprepared we are for the care of people who have ongoing illness and more
and more cohousing communities are going to face this.  It cannot be faced
naively. It has to be done with intelligence and a combination of respect
for medical information and an understanding of the complexity by which an
individual based on issue of care has access to resources that fall
outside the pervue of a community of people volunteering help and
assistance.

It includes anything from facility, design of communities, special
equipment, alternative home based services and access to networks of
experts and care providers. This is a realm of expertise I have and do
well based on experience with facility design, equipment, special
education, special care needs and distinguishing the cost and care of a
person aging in place or in a network of graduate care facilities.

The knowledge Clinical Focus offers is filtered and by subscription
because it requires interpretation from professionals that communities and
individuals can gain advantage from.

Thank you for speaking up here.  The US health care system is 200% more
expensive than the most expensive country in the UK and provides the least
support for care at home. It is therefore falling to the communities,
people , families and more and like the environmental issues creeping up
on us in the United States as a bit of a surprise because our health care
system and government have not acted well in response to the rising need.


On Sun, April 29, 2007 9:33 pm, Juva wrote:
> Following up on Lavinia's comments, "I hope some day we can find a way to
> blend it with sustainable social structures that recognize and respect
> people who need more assistance in life than others due to chronic illness
> or challenged aging. The government infrastructure in the US is very weak
> in
> this regard."
>
>
>
> We decided not to wait for the government. Some of us in CoHo Ecovillage
> in
> Corvallis have started a new non-profit organization called A Home in
> Community (Tree sent an email about it a couple weeks ago) with the goal
> to
> increase awareness among cohousing communities and people living with
> disabilities about the mutual benefits of living in community together.
> We
> plan to provide support and assistance to make this happen for communities
> and individuals living with disabilities. Our first project is to purchase
> a
> $214,000 condo unit at CoHo Ecovillage in Corvallis, Oregon, which will be
> a
> subsidized rental property for low-income people with disabilities.  Our
> Members and Ex-members have already donated around $80,000 and we have
> just
> started! If your interested, check out our new web page
> www.AhomeInCommunity.org.  We definitely don't plan on stopping with CoHo
> Ecovillage but will keep going.  We hope to share the lessons learned in
> fundraising (and the structure we have created) and what we have learned
> and
> will learn living with our Ahic rental and our Home life neighbors (a home
> purchased by a non-profit that creates homes for adults living with
> developmental disabilities adults http://www.homelifeinc.org/coho.html ).
> We expect to move in October of this year.
>
>
>
> Isn't is great what we can accomplish with a group of people working
> together!  Yeah, I know preaching to the choir.
>
>
>
> Juva
>
> Ah, Community - check it out!
>
> cohousing-corvallis.com
>
>
>
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>


-- 
Lavinia Weissman
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