I am following the model of another individual, who is blogging about their experience in community service. I am going to blog about my experience of transitioning young adults out of nursing homes. My main client is 30. She is 5 years older than my husband and 7 years old than myself. Her only crime, her only sin is that she has muscular dystrophy and lost control of her wheel chair and fell down the steps. By the way in case your wondering, thats how it always begins. Someone with Mental Illness, Mental Retardation, or a related disorder will get hurt (hit by a car, fall down the steps) and they will go to the hospital. The hospital will treat them and then they need rehab (I mean we all would) After that they are supposed to be imprisoned, I mean in rehab for 30 days, 60, 90 or 120 days. The state approves it and us tax payers will pay for it. But, do you know what happens?
THEY GET STUCK!!!!!!!!!!!
Some people get stuck for months others get stuck for years. So imagine it now, you living in a NF with the elderly and thinking there is no way out. Not only do the people in these nursing homes get depressed but normally they are abused. The nursing home dislikes all the extra care that a person with quadriplegia requires and they don't bother to put the extra effort into help. So, they get stuck. Sometimes people like myself and the organization, that I work for come in and try to help them out but a lot of times, they are stuck. It is the most miserable, depressing thing that I could ever think of. So I am trying to alert people to this phenomenon and I am going to continue to blog my experience.
keep blogging. I am very curious to know more about this. I work in inaptient psychiatry, and people get "stuck" there all the time too, sometimes up to a year! and we are an acute care facility, not a rehab. people are supposed to be out in two weeks max! and tax dollars fund this waste too.
If you see abuses happening, please look into your options for reporting it. for nursing homes, there is supposed to be a name and number of an ombudsman posted where all employees can see it.
"If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem."
http://progressiveu.org/blog/52633-nurse-ratched-stark-raving-mad
"O, I'm sorry you took that, -I meant that for the Devil, and you have stepped in and taken the blow. Don't get between me and the Devil, brother, and the you won't get hurt." --Billy Hibbard