OHCA Spring Summer 2017

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The Oregon Caregiver Spring/Summer 2017 8
FEATURE
A fter welcoming the couple and
helping them get comfortable,
Leo said the husband shared their
story. The wife suffered from dementia
and, up until an incident that weekend,
she had been doing alright living in
their home without professional care.
Then, the previous Friday, the husband
came inside from doing yard work, and
his wife was missing. He went back
outside, but his wife was nowhere to
be found. He called everybody they
knew to see if they had heard from her.
Nobody knew where she was. Then he
called the police, and they put out a
missing person’s report. All evening
family members and neighbors joined
in the search. Almost 24 hours later,
after a sleepless night, the husband
received a call from someone at a bus
station on the southern Oregon coast.
They’d found his wife. Though the
wife wasn't able to tell the bus station
workers where she was from or where
she was trying to go, the workers were
able to use her cell phone to call the last
number she dialed-her husband.
Like the couple in Leo’s story, many
families with loved ones living with
dementia don’t know the answers to
important questions about dementia,
like where to turn to for resources and
assistance, how to provide dementia-
specific care at home, and when to move
from in-home care to a memory care
community. Giving consumers easier
access to education and resources is one
of the public policy recommendations
of The Purple Ribbon Commission 2016
Report. At the time of print, these public
policy recommendations are currently
being considered by the Oregon State
Legislature, as HB 3359.
Leo is one of 15 Alzheimer’s and
dementia experts serving on the Purple
Ribbon Commission, whose report
outlines findings and recommendations
for advancing quality dementia care in
Oregon.
The Purple Ribbon Commission is
an independent entity comprised of
subject matter and practice experts,
convened to step back and apply a
broader, objective lens to Alzheimer’s
disease and other dementias in Oregon.
During a two-day event in November,
the Commissioners gathered with
consumers, family members, state
regulators, other subject matter
experts, and dementia service providers
who presented on their experiences
living with or caring for people with
dementia. From these discussions, the
Commissioners emphasized four areas
of recommendations for advancing
quality dementia care in Oregon. These
four areas are family and consumer
supports and programs, quality metrics
to track and measure success, acuity-
based staffing models and workforce
development, and caregiver training and
competency.
The Purple Ribbon Commission
was brought together by OHCA and
the Alzheimer’s Association Oregon
Chapter to address concerns from
other stakeholders about the quality
of care provided in licensed memory
care settings. As the Commission came
together, it was clear that Commission
work needed to encompass a more
comprehensive view of dementia care
including family supports.
Dr. Keren Brown Wilson, a Purple Ribbon
Commissioner and president of the
Jessie F. Richardson Foundation, became
engaged in memory care when she was
19 years-old. “My mother was living in a
nursing home and wanted to have a life
that she felt had more autonomy, more
control, more independence, and more
privacy. All the things that human beings
want. This led me to develop what is now
called the Oregon Model of Assisted
Living,” she said. In the early 1980s,
Dr. Brown Wilson became the operator
of the first licensed assisted living
community both in Oregon and the U.S.
At the same time, Oregon also became the
first state to make assisted living eligible
for Medicaid funding.
Dr. Brown Wilson feels strongly about
the importance of the Commission’s
caregiver training and competency
recommendations and their impact on
quality care. “The underlying principles
of assisted living are all about being
person centered and dignity and choice,”
she said. Following these principles as a
fundamental foundation is important for
every caregiver she says. “The concept
of letting people live in as normal an
environment as possible, have as much
control of their lives as possible, and
having the capacity on the part of the
provider to support those principals by
having well-trained staff who believe in
their values is, to me, bread and butter,”
she said.
Dr. Mauro Hernandez, CEO of Concepts
in Community Living and a Purple
A panel of family members and people living with dementia shared their experiences with the Purple Ribbon Commission.