The Long Term Care Ombudsman Program

Ombudsman Initiatives

1.  Long-Term Care Mediation Program

Mission Statement
The Long-Term Care Mediation Program offers free, on-site mediation at nursing homes and assisted living facilities in Harris County.

What is Long Term Care Mediation?
Mediation is an option to resolve a dispute in a nursing home or assisted living. It is a process by which a neutral individual (the mediator) facilitates communication between parties facing a difficult issue. It is an opportunity for you and the others involved to tell your story, respond to each other, and resolve your concerns. It is not a binding arbitration. Participation is voluntary.

Overview

As the population ages, it is more common than ever to hear that a friend or family member is struggling with difficult caregiving decisions for an older loved one in a nursing home. While mediation has proven to be an effective process for clarifying issues and settling other types of disputes, until now institutionalized adults and their families facing conflict have not enjoyed access to the mediation process.

The goal of the program is to introduce the benefits of mediation into nursing homes and assisted living by tailoring the process to address the needs of facility residents.

Long term care mediation encourages conflict resolution through neutral fact-finding in a safe and confidential setting . A third-party neutral facilitator (the mediator) ensures the wishes of the older adult, family members, and other health care staff can be heard and considered.

Types of disputes that can be mediated

•  Care planning issues

•  Resident to resident disputes

•  Issues involving communication between family members and staff

•  Other concerns related to quality of care

The Harris County Ombudsman Long Term Care Program housed at the University of Texas-Houston, Center on Aging is supporting the expansion of mediation into nursing and assisted living facilities.

For more information, see the attached article. (refer to PDF).

2.  Creative Expression

The Long-Term Care Program offers training in three programs to spark memories.

•  Life Story is a six to eight week workshop involving writing, reflecting, and sharing stories of one's life. The writing group experiments with a variety of suggested writing techniques including narrative, journaling, letters and poetry. The personal narratives are then shared and other members of the group are encouraged to comment on positive aspects of the author's writing technique and style.

•  Storyboarding is a program that encourages residents to reconfigure a lifetime of experiences, re-examine values and make their own expressive choices through the creation of a visible storyboard. The storyboard presents a montage of themes through pictures, achievements, crafts and mementos collected over the course of a lifetime. Prominently displaying the storyboard allows residents, visitors and staff to see the residents as they see themselves, providing an avenue of insight into the resident's life which can lead to deeper human connections. This process works well with all residents in long-term care.

•  Creative storytelling is a program for residents with moderate to late stage dementia who are shown a whimsical picture and then asked simple questions to create a story from imagination. A trained facilitator writes each response on a flip chart to record their story. There are no wrong answers which allow residents to feel secure in the environment and helps evoke responses. At the end of the series (six to ten weeks) all the stories are combined into a book. A book signing party marks the finale of the program where staff, friends and family celebrate.

 

For more information, see the attached article. (refer to PDF).

3. TXPERT (Texas Producing Expert Residents Today)

One of the goals of the Long-Term Care Ombudsman program is to empower residents to become more effective self-advocates. Traditionally this has been done by supporting Resident Councils, but beginning in 2008, the Ombudsman Program initiated a 5-session empowerment program called TXPERT . Based on the highly successful Pennsylvania PEER Project (P ennsylvania's E mpowered E xpert R esidents , TXPERT aims to empower residents by helping them re-engage and enhance skills gained through a lifetime of experience in order to resolve issues that arise in their facilities. Training topics include effective listening and communication skills, diversity and confidentiality and the process of reaching resolution.

 

Requirements for TXPERT are minimal – private space for up to 15 residents to meet for five consecutive weeks (1 hour each week), a television/VCR/DVD set-up and mid-session snacks. The culmination of training is a graduation celebration in which family, friends, facility staff and others are invited. Ongoing support is provided by the Ombudsman program to help graduates put their skills to use.

Clarewood House TXPERT graduates, 2008 (with facilitators)


For more information, see PEER at http://www.papeers.org/

Ombudsman Menu



For more information:


Dr. Diane Persson, PhD
Director, Long Term Care
Ombudsman Program

The University of Texas
School of Nursing at Houston
6901 Bertner, suite 611
Houston, TX 77030

713.500.9931
800.296.2606 (toll free)
FAX: 713.500.0266
ombudsman@uth.tmc.edu