Cohousing-L Mailing List: Care On-site

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

One service that communities could provide is to have the community 
life team become experts on where to find help. It would be a great 
service if a member of the community could just direct someone to the 
best sources of service, particularly when it is an emergency or 
unexpected situation, rather than trying to provide the services 
themselves.

States vary in their responsiveness and capacity but my family has 
chosen to leave a parent in Iowa because the services there are 
excellent and since she is "plugged into" the network of providers it 
is relatively easy and she is "at home" even when she is in the care 
facility. Her church is still down the street even if she can't go 
there and she recognizes all the people and places on the local news. 
All these services are provided according to need on various sliding 
scales.

It would take more than a year for a family to figure out all the 
systems and regulations. Having this information available to neighbors 
and families when a resident first starts "slipping" or a chronic 
disease strikes would have been a godsend.

Anything beyond the normal meals, errand-running, and "baby" sitting, 
can be an enormous drain on a community as well as the family -- 
particularly when needs are repeated and lengthy. Turning a cohousing 
community into a long term care facility could become counter 
productive very quickly. Finding external resources would avoid this 
and still allow residents who need support to get it.

Sharon
---
Sharon Villines
Building Community: A Guide to Creating New Neighborhoods
http://www.buildingcommunity.info