ARISE - EFR
The theme of the podcast is independent living and advocacy for people with disabilities.
ARISE - EFR
Advocacy in Action: Inside the Ombudsman Program at ARISE-EFR
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In this episode, ARISE-EFR CEO Bruce Drake is joined by Bill Rose, Program Manager of the Ombudsman Program, for an in-depth conversation about advocacy, dignity, and the rights of older adults living in long-term care settings.
Bill shares his journey from professor of gerontology to nonprofit advocate and explains what ombudsmen do, how the program works across Central New York, and why this service is so critical for residents of nursing homes and assisted living facilities. From resolving everyday concerns to addressing serious care issues, this episode offers a behind-the-scenes look at how ombudsmen advocate for residents’ voices to be heard.
Listeners will also learn how families can access support, what to expect when calling the Ombudsman hotline, and how community members can get involved as volunteers.
📞 Ombudsman Hotline: 315-671-5108
Meet Bruce And Bill
SPEAKER_00This is the Arise Exceptional Family Resources Podcast with your host, CEO Bruce Drake.
Why Gerontology Matters
SPEAKER_01Hi everyone, I'm Bruce Drake, the CEO at Arise and Exceptional Family Resources, and I'm your host today for Exceptional Talk on Disabilities. I'm excited today to be joined by Bill Rose, the program manager for the Ombudsman's program at Arise in Exceptional Family Resources. Bill, please tell me that I said that right. Bruce, you did great. Okay. Ombudsman. Ombudsman. It's a Swedish word for advocate. I've heard that. So thank you for sharing that. So, Bill, before we get into this, why don't you tell everybody a little bit about yourself?
SPEAKER_02Okay. Well, I um I used to be a professor of gerontology at SUNY Swego, and the uh the pandemic gave me a good push to go back to what I used to love, which was working in nonprofit work. All right, wait, wait, wait.
SPEAKER_01So you're just gonna have to you're walking me through a lot today, Bill. So gerontology. Study of older people and wants and needs.
SPEAKER_02Wow. So I I have to ask, how did you get into that? Well, I think it's gotta be that I had wonderful grandparents. Okay. Uh and I had an older family with a lot of people who were just fascinating and took an interest in me and made sure I took an interest in them. And I have so many wonderful experiences in childhood that uh I was always pleased to talk to and get to know older people.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_02And that led me to wondering about how do older people fit in artists' society? And often they don't. In fact, more and more they become less and less critical to our everyday lives. So is that typical?
Respect For Elders Across Cultures
SPEAKER_01I mean, is the United States typical in that regard? We are not. So I mean, I I don't want to make this too big of a conversation, but I I want to know. So how how how does a uh an elderly person in the United States get treated versus an elderly person in another country, Canada, or well you can certainly take the extreme differences like uh Japan, Korea, uh China, where uh India, where older people are revered.
SPEAKER_02They're they're considered uh you know uh wise individuals who have wisdom that is critical for all all of us to know. Okay. Uh and we used to be like that uh in older days, and uh that's kind of going away.
SPEAKER_01Is that a recent phenomenon or is that something that's happened over?
SPEAKER_02It's a modernity thing with industrialization, uh really, and we become a very use-driven society. And social media and the internet hasn't helped.
SPEAKER_01Sure. Well, it you know, it it's funny, you know, it's that that joke. Whenever you need to use technology, you know, grab your eight-year-old nephew, and they'll they're the one who's gonna help you with it. And you know, folks who are older are kind of seen as you know, behind the times, certainly. Indeed. So you go to school. So at a young age, you decide to go to school for this?
SPEAKER_02I went to school for psychology and sociology, studying human development, uh family studies, that sort of thing. Where was that? Uh I got a doctorate from uh human development and family studies from Purdue University in Indiana.
From Professor To Advocate
SPEAKER_01Oh, that's great. Are you from Indiana originally? Excellent. I as a someone who lives south of Albany for about 25 years, I love to hear it. I'm a downstater. Okay. Great. So so now tell us about what Ombudsmen do and tell us about the program a little bit.
What An Ombudsman Is
Training And Certification
SPEAKER_02Well, ombudsmen are certified by New York State here in New York, but they uh are in every state. Uh in fact, I just I'm wearing a t-shirt from there. I just got back from the National Consumer Voice Conference where I met uh which I went to for the first time. So many wonderful people that do ombudsman work all over the country. Uh in fact, I met someone from Guam who is an ombudsman, which was fascinating. So when you say certified, what what does that mean? What do you need to be? You need to go through uh pre-shadowing training, uh, and then you have uh classroom type training, and then there's post-shadow training, and then you're mentored with an uh uh a staff ombudsman for a period of time, and then supervised by a manager.
SPEAKER_01About how long do you how long does it take to become certified? It's about uh a month on and off of training. And do you need some sort of educational requirement as well? Not at all. Okay. Absolutely not. Just somebody who has a passion for what you do and is willing to be an advocate.
SPEAKER_02That's right.
SPEAKER_01Right. So we know your background, we know that you're certified, we understand what that means. We know a little bit about Tokyo and Japan and Korea. Sorry. No, no, this this is exactly what I want. But now tell me what you do, what it means to be what is a day in the life of somebody with your credential.
SPEAKER_02The average ombudsman, uh, we get calls to our hotline. Uh and uh me as the manager, I go through those calls and then I quickly send them off to the uh our staff and our uh volunteers uh who are all certified ombudsmen, and they get the calls, and that is included in their days uh uh as they go around doing routine visits. Okay. We have approximately sixty facilities that are uh short-term rehabilitation, long-term skilled nursing care, assisted living, and uh uh just a handful of family type homes.
Facilities And Region Coverage
SPEAKER_01Is that uh are these the facilities that the general public would consider like a nursing home?
SPEAKER_02Nursing home would typically be the skilled nursing facility, yes.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_02So we have about sixty of those different types uh over what geographic area? All right. So in our region, region ten, we cover uh on Onondaga, Oswego, Cortland, and Cayuga counties.
Why People Call The Hotline
SPEAKER_01Okay. And so now we we have staff who so we have people calling into the hotline. Why are they calling the hotline?
SPEAKER_02Many of them are residents uh in skilled nursing care or assisted living. Uh some of them are family members uh and friends. Occasionally we'll get someone from Office on Aging or from APS or uh even law enforcement calling saying, hey, uh, you know, we have this case and they're in a nursing facility. It's really our specialty, so uh that's they give us a call.
SPEAKER_01And why are they calling? Are they they're unhappy with this? They have a concern. Okay.
From Complaints To Action
SPEAKER_02It could be something as little as, hey, my food is always coming cold or it's being late, to things that are more serious, like uh, you know, I I wear briefs and I'm not getting changed for hours, or my call line is it's just it's too long, to things like uh medicines being uh given not often enough or not at all, uh to where it's sometimes life-threatening things where they've been injured. Uh just had one with broken bones that uh the nursing staff did not attend to and didn't believe the uh the resident. It turns out they had broken bones.
SPEAKER_01So what do we do at that point, right? So the person calls the hotline, you hear their message, or you talk to them directly. Uh I fell and I broke my bones, and the and the facility's not taking it seriously. What do what do we do?
Care Plan Meetings Explained
SPEAKER_02Well, that we advocate for them. So we uh we typically within 24 hours, uh we'll certainly talk to them. Uh hopefully within 48, we will go to the facility, speak with them, uh try to attend to it. Sometimes it can be uh worked on within the facility that day, uh, but certainly it's attended to as quick as we can.
SPEAKER_01And what when you say attended to, is it as simple as just bringing this to the attention of the facility, or do we have to take uh I'll say an assertive role? How does that play out?
SPEAKER_02Well, much of the time it it just involves talking to the resident, finding out, boiling it down to what exactly is their wants and needs, okay. Uh, and then figuring out with them, with their permission, what would they like us to act on. And typically we'll go to uh a director of nursing or the director of social services or someone uh uh there in administration uh to try and work it out, hopefully that day or that week. If we have to, then we try and set up a care plan meeting where we're getting all the interested parties in the same room and then we we plug through it uh and and figure out the best plan for moving forward where everybody's getting what they want, especially the resident.
SPEAKER_01So what what triggers a care plan meeting? It's something is it an issue that can't easily be resolved, or is there some discrepancy about whether or not the concerns are are valid? I mean what what triggers something like that?
Resident Consent Comes First
SPEAKER_02Typically it's because uh there's just a lot of voices. So the director of nursing has to uh agree to something, but then they also need the input of physical therapy because they may say, oh, they need more of this or less of that. Uh and then social services needs to uh uh make sure that they can do the activities that they're wanting to do, let's say, and then put it into place with the resident. And if the resident says yes, then we move forward and uh follow up and make sure it's happening and everybody's happy.
SPEAKER_01And what's what's your role in that process? Is it just the bringing the people together or do you play an advocacy role during the course of the meeting?
Routine Facility Visits
SPEAKER_02We ad we advocate for the resident and what they want. You know, we can be a liaison of sorts, okay, and we can help uh often, especially when family are involved, it can get uh emotional, you know, for a loved one. Uh so we can help by providing information, education that you know they just need to know about, let's say, about the trajectory of Alzheimer's disease, and the family just doesn't totally understand that. And sure. We can help with that process.
SPEAKER_01So when you get the call and you first go to the visit, I'm assuming the first thing you're doing is meeting privately with the the person with the concern and maybe any uh circle of support, family members, people that are important to them to to kind of hash out what the issue is?
SPEAKER_02We certainly talk to uh the family if they're involved, but the resident comes first. This is all about what the resident wants uh and what they want acted on. Sometimes some of what they want is just to talk about the problem.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_02Uh and they don't want anything to change. They just are they don't want anything acted on, so they don't get permission. If they don't get permission, then we don't we don't act. But uh we always track it, we always keep uh a record of what's going on uh so that if they need us later, we can do that. But typically they will say, well, can we work on this? Right. And we take the the issue they want it worked on and we we try to fix it that day if we can.
SPEAKER_01Now you've been talking about what happens when you get uh uh a hotline call, but you also mentioned regular visits. Can you describe what that is a little bit?
SPEAKER_02And that's how Ombudsman spend most of their days are uh going to uh facilities. We go to every nursing home uh once a week.
SPEAKER_01I'm sorry, how many how many facilities are there in this four county area?
Regions And Scale Across States
SPEAKER_02Well, there's sixty total. Uh about half of that is nursing homes. Okay. Uh and then uh another, let's say 40 percent are assisted living. We see them at least once a month. And in the family homes, we we do once a quarter.
SPEAKER_01Okay. And I I I want to know more about the regular visits, but does every county have a program like ours? In general, yes. In general, yes. And you talked about being in region 10. How many for the for these purposes, how many regions are there in New York State? Do you know about? I think there's 14. Fourteen different regions.
SPEAKER_02They're not all the same size, and some of them have uh more going on. We're like a medium-sized region. Okay. Uh New York City would be a very large one, you know. Um Jefferson would be a more rural one. So they have a rural ones. They have a little less going on.
Volunteers Wanted
SPEAKER_01Right. And how many providers of this are we the only Omspuds ombudsman's program in our four county in Region 10, or are there others?
SPEAKER_02No, we're the only ones out of uh a Rise EFR, we're the only ones that do uh uh the ombudsman work.
SPEAKER_01Is that typical per region, or if there's a highly populated region, might they have more than one? Do you know?
SPEAKER_02Um I don't think so. But I don't I don't know for sure. Uh some places like Florida are so huge and have so many facilities, it's possible. I met someone in Florida at the conference that uh they had hundreds of uh facilities that they work with, and they have many, many ombudsmen and many volunteers. And I should mention our volunteers. We we really do need our volunteers, and we're looking for volunteers. So if people are interested in working with older people, this is a good opportunity to do that. If you have a little extra time and during the day and you can have a passion for helping older people, you should give us a call at uh 315-671-5108.
Free Services And How To Reach Us
SPEAKER_01Excellent. So is it just the passion for help uh helping older people that you would want from a volunteer, or are there other skill sets that you're looking for or minimum requirements that a volunteer would get?
SPEAKER_02It's good to be a caring person, it's good to be an analytical person to a certain extent. Uh and truthfully, sometimes you need a little stomach. Okay. Because uh it's not always pretty.
SPEAKER_01Okay. So s sometimes the issues that that come up are are difficult issues, and you have to be aware of that going in. Do we provide any training to these volunteers?
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. They uh they are mentored, they do shadowing, and they get classroom training, and there's lots of support from uh the state and from uh EFR RISE. Excellent. Uh is there any cost to the people who receive the program? Absolutely none. So it's completely free for anyone that lives in one of these facilities.
SPEAKER_01Excellent. So people can get information on the program at the Arise EFR website. They can call the phone number if and is that the same number for the hotline?
SPEAKER_02It is the hotline number.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so why don't you it's also my number. Oh, excellent. It's it's is it your home personal phone number?
SPEAKER_02No, it's it's it is my personal, it's my desk number. Excellent. Why don't you give it one more time? 315-671-5108.
Closing And Resources
SPEAKER_01Excellent. Bill, thank you so much for finding the time to talk with us today about the Ombudsman's program. Ladies and gentlemen, that was Bill Rose from Arise Exceptional Family Resources Ombudsman Program. As always, thank you all for listening, and we hope you join us next time as well.
SPEAKER_00This has been the Rise Exceptional Family Resources Podcast with CEO Bruce Drake, recorded and produced at the WCNY public broadcasting studios. For more information, visit our website at contactafr.org. You can also follow us on Facebook. Thank you for listening.