OHCA The Oregon Caregiver Fall Winter 2021

The Oregon Caregiver FALL/WINTER 2021 www.ohca.com 26 PROFILE Senator Kate Lieber (D-Beaverton) POLICY MAKER Senator Kate Lieber (D-Beaverton) serves on the Human Services Committee and is the co-chair of the Joint Ways & Means Subcommittee on Human Services. She shares her vision for advancing equity and the quality of services in long term care. What have you learned about Oregon’s long term care sector that you didn’t know before you took office? One of the things that has become very clear is the importance of long term care to our entire health care system. It’s not just for the elderly and people with disabilities, it’s also about folks leaving the hospital and other health care settings and making sure that our continuum of care is whole. Long term care is critical to making our healthcare system function and making sure that Oregonians receive appropriate levels of care. There are significant challenges facing the long term care workforce and they do an incredible service to our state and are under extraordinarily challenging circumstances. We’ve got to make sure that we continue to support them because they make the whole system work. What impacts have you seen on the sector during the pandemic? The pandemic has affected long term care in a couple of profound ways. First, you had a workforce that faced these exacerbated challenges, including staffing shortages, but the COVID-19 pandemic laid them bare. Adjusting to the new health and safety protocols over and over again really put an enormous strain on the system. When the pandemic shut down long term care facilities from outside resources and from families, you also had to take on these heavy responsibilities of helping residents find other ways to connect. We can’t forget COVID-19 was incredibly devastating for the residents in these settings. They were always among our most vulnerable, and this horrible disease took many of them, and our long term care workforce watched that and was there with them during this time. We cannot discount the trauma of watching that many people pass from such a devastating disease. What are some of your biggest lessons learned during the pandemic and what are you looking forward to in the future? I think a big piece of this question is to really understand how interrelated we all are, with each other and our communities. It wasn’t just COVID-19 that we faced over these past two years— we also faced wildfires, ice storms, power outages, and extreme heat. All these challenges tore at the fabric of our society, but they also shined a light on how important it is that we take care of everybody in our community. The pandemic didn’t create the cracks that are in their system, but it completely exacerbated them; it exposed these vulnerabilities, especially in our economy, in our health care system, and in our behavioral health care system. In order to be really, truly resilient, we’ve got to make sure everybody has access to care services and economic security. This economy doesn’t work for everybody, and it certainly didn’t work for our most vulnerable. True resilience is going to have to really make us understand we’ve got to take care of people. As for what I’m looking forward to, I wouldn’t mind having a little more facetime with my colleagues and my community in person and I would really love to have an in-person legislative session. What role do you see the legislature playing in helping our state prepare for an increasing senior population and, as a result, an increased need for well-trained caregivers? There are significant challenges facing the long term care workforce and they do an incredible service to our state and are under extraordinarily challenging circumstances. We’ve got to make sure that we continue to support them because they make the whole system work.