Heather Picotte

In this episode of the IMPART Alliance podcast, we are joined by Heather Picotte, a communications architect for IMPART Alliance and Age Alive. The conversation, recorded live in Marquette, Michigan, delves into Heather's journey and her profound connection to direct care work, inspired by her mother’s long career in the field.

She also discusses the critical shortage of 36,000 direct-care workers in Michigan, particularly in rural areas like some locations in the Upper Peninsula, and the challenges faced by caregivers, including lack of training, low pay, and limited support. 

Heather's dual role with IMPART Alliance and Age Alive involves advocating for direct-care workers and promoting aging-related research and intergenerational programming. She underscores the significance of collaboration and open dialogue to address the complex challenges in the direct care field.

Transcript

Podcast: Heather Picotte

[00:00:00] Tracy Anderson: Welcome to the IMPART Alliance podcast. Today we are joined by Heather Picotte. Heather is a communications architect for IMPART Alliance, as well as our sister organization Age Alive.

Heather, thank you so much for joining us. We are actually live here in Marquette, Michigan. It's such a beautiful place and we're so happy to be here with you today. 

[00:00:21] Heather Picotte: Thank you, Tracy. I'm really happy to be here to talk with you about the incredible work we're doing.

[00:00:26] Tracy Anderson: So tell me a little bit about how you even became involved with IMPART Alliance and Age Alive.

[00:00:32] Heather Picotte: Oh, sure. Well back in the early 2000s, I was working with the state's quality improvement organization and had the really unique opportunity to work with Dr. Clare Luz. I ended up being a grant administrator on an adult abuse and neglect prevention training grant that she was conducting and we ended up training about 4, 000 direct-care workers across the state of Michigan on adult abuse and neglect prevention.

So it was a really great opportunity to see the amazing research Dr. Luz was doing. I had always had a passion for aging related issues and so that led me to eventually head over to MSU where I began working with them and have been working on and off with Dr. Luz over the years, up until the last five years or so. We reconnected and I've been helping support IMPART Alliance as well as the sister organization, Age Alive. 

[00:01:25] Tracy Anderson: That's great. Tell me a little bit about how your passion that you speak of developed. 

[00:01:30] Heather Picotte: I am a daughter of a direct-care worker. My mother was a direct-care worker for over 25 years in Iron County here in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

And I watched from a young age her providing care to family members and which later led into her providing care to individuals in the community. She worked with an agency in the community and did private duty as well. We were a big family, the oldest of six, and we would see my mom go every day to work to care for other people.

And I would hear stories of the incredible impact that she had on their lives, allowing them to really live their lives and have independence and a voice. And it was really inspiring to me.

[00:02:15] Tracy Anderson: And to grow up in that and see firsthand the work that it takes behind just alone being a direct-care worker and some of the challenges as well that your mother most likely faced, I'm sure. Could you talk a little bit about maybe how that's inspired you to be in this field? And help for that change. Help push for that change.

[00:02:36] Heather Picotte: In addition to my mother being a direct care worker, when I was 13 years old, my father was in a severe car accident. He ended up having to have reconstructive surgery and now he lives with a closed head injury.

So at 13, I became a caregiver at home for my siblings and my father, along with my mother, who then became the breadwinner in our family and started to care for other people and work in other capacities too, to help pay the bills. And so I was really inspired with all of the need that's out there to help support individuals who are disabled, as well as people who are elderly.

 At one point into, I ended up personally myself, along with my mother being a caregiver for my grandfather who had cancer. And so we helped him through that journey, and so it really inspired me to try to really work to advocate for people in who need care at home, as well as the people who provide care.

I watched as my mother, through the dynamics of a very tough situation when you have a loved one with a diagnosis, have to navigate those nuances with family where different people have different views about what needs to be done. And then you have other health care providers and other folks coming in.

And on top of that, I also watch as my mother as a direct-care worker was out in the community working on things, but would have run into barriers where, you know, maybe we ran into an issue where we had car issues and she couldn't get to work or she had to get, to one client and then another one in a very rural area where she would have to travel a long distance.

And in many cases there wouldn't be compensation for mileage. So we are working to be a family who has the resources we need to be healthy and living our lives. While at the same time, my mother worked really hard to try to navigate those challenges as a direct-care worker.

The pay wasn't very high, but the work was really meaningful and she's quite a tenacious lady and I would just love seeing all of those letters she would get from family members saying, thank you for coming to care for my mother. She's finally feels confident and comfortable getting care from somebody else.

We're very prideful people in the UP and we like to do things ourselves. So asking for help and receiving care is, is, is tough. And I think that's tough for a lot of people. I can speak from the culture of the culture I grew up in, and that is, it's tough to ask for help when you live in a rural area and you're used to being resourceful and relying on yourself. I've watched my mother navigate that process for not only herself overcoming the challenges she needed to in order to care for other people, but also to care for us as well. 

[00:05:15] Tracy Anderson: Speaking to the whole state of Michigan, we are clearly experiencing a critical shortage of direct-care workers. And I imagine in the upper peninsula where it is, you know, It's obviously more rural. What does that look like here, as far as? How that reflects on services and people getting the care that they need.

[00:05:34] Heather Picotte: Well, we're short 36, 000 direct-care workers. And with the Upper Peninsula having one of the largest aging populations, obviously, this issue impacts this area greatly.

 We are always on the search for good quality caregivers and there are some really great people out there who are providing services to individuals who are older adults or are, you know, individuals with disabilities, but many of them are seeking additional training, have not received professional training don't feel unsupported because they might be going off on their own and getting the job because somebody referred them to a family friend who might have a job for them to help care for somebody in their family or a friend and they're going in with very little knowledge or training to provide services and support to somebody because they think it's meaningful but don't always feel confident that they have all the skills that they need.

And in some cases, there are groups and entities out there that might be working to provide services to individuals in the community, but they themselves have challenges with maybe limited training opportunities or resources to provide training, funding to provide better compensation to their staff or insurance.

 It's challenging because there are agencies who are. Looking to recruit people, but there just aren't people out there that they've been able to identify who they've been able to bring into to meet the need that's out there in the community. So we have this great need for care and support and services that we see out there.

Probably another layer of the population that needs supports and services but hasn't even asked for it yet. And a very limited pool of caregivers. There's a great need out there and definitely a want by the caregivers to get additional training and resources to allow them to be successful and independent and be able to focus on their work.

[00:07:27] Tracy Anderson: So if you think about your role with IMPART Alliance and Age Alive, I know you often find yourself balancing between the two organizations. Could you talk a little bit about your role? In IMPART Alliance, and maybe even how that folds into what you do for Age Alive.

[00:07:48] Heather Picotte: Initially, prior to all of the amazing growth that IMPART Alliance has seen over the last couple years with their recent MDHHS funding and other work that they've done, I was providing some communication support to the organization. There was a small crew of us who were very passionate about aging related issues, direct-care workforce issues, along with Dr. Luz, and we were continuing to educate people about the shortage and what we needed to do to work together and really come to the table. And one of the messages we've been working on is the fact that we can't solve a problem without bringing people to the table who are affected by it. So getting direct-care workers, getting the individuals who are at the point of care, who are receiving care, to be able to have a voice, to have a say, to tell us what the issues are.

To provide data and information to help us understand intimately what they need versus us working from an institutional model of saying, 'we think this population needs this resource.' So I'm really excited that the work that we've been doing is really, engaging those folks. And so being here, being boots on the ground for IMPART Alliance and Age Alive in the Upper Peninsula, I've tried to work as a conduit to connect organizations in the aging network together to help work on direct-care workforce issues as well as other aging related issues.

And then also connect them with IMPART Alliance and Age Alive and how we can utilize those resources that many organizations might know about or have access to downstate and bring those to the UP. So, growing up here, I want us to have the resources and the knowledge and understanding and access to things that we traditionally, I think, have felt in the UP we haven't had access to or knowledge of.

And we want to be included in the conversation. And so, I'm really excited at the role I can play with IMPART Alliance, as well as Age Alive. And being a voice and connecting other voices to a lot of decision makers and stakeholders, so that they understand what the real issues are. I can see myself as a collaborator, a connector. I also provide different communication support where needed and in part and age alive have some wonderful communication folks who are coming on board. So my role has been evolving a bit, but I think that most importantly is, is trying to understand the issues that are going on in the community and helping to make sure that people are aware of what's going on and so and with the sister organization age alive, I tend to do a little bit more communications work with them and providing some additional support as it's growing and it, for those who might not be familiar with it, really focuses on aging related research on intergenerational programming, lifelong learning and well being and just a wonderful program that's brought in healing through the arts through our butterfly garden programming and some really inspiring work with the research forum talking about aging related research and bringing those really high level academic concepts to the public so they can learn about the research activities that are going on in the aging network at MSU. So, yeah, lots of, I put my fingers in a lot of things.

[00:10:50] Tracy Anderson: And often times we refer to Age Alive as Michigan State University's unofficial center on aging. Uh, how would you describe Age Alive? 

[00:11:02] Heather Picotte: I just think it's this wonderful network of, aging experts working to change the way we perceive life in aging.

And when we think of aging, we think of older adults, but really, there's a process and journey that we're all on. And there are things we can do from an early standpoint in our health that will impact our well being as we get older. So really, aging related research could really impact a number of different activities and research activities that we're doing at the university level.

And so, I think that we are an innovative aging related research, research resource, a resource to connect people to intergenerational programming and to help kind of translate some of that more complex information to the public so they can understand the impact it can create. And also creating connections.

We've connected, you know, for example, the Ishpeming Multipurpose Senior Center with the research forum that we host every year in East Lansing and now they're the UP site and they held a forum and people were really super excited to have this forum that's typically held at MSU with all this innovative aging related research here in the UP where people could walk in, sit down, and learn about all of this work that's being done right from the faculty that are working on them.

[00:12:24] Tracy Anderson: I love that connection being at the event at MSU and seeing that reach that we had all the way in the UP and the involvement and how different attendees were able to ask questions and bring up their concerns, but also, like you said, hear about the research that's ongoing at MSU right now.

So with that, how do you describe IMPART Alliance to someone? 

[00:12:46] Heather Picotte: I often refer to it as the State Advocacy Group for Direct Care Workers. And so, we are, working hard to make sure that people are aware of the resources that are there. I know that we've been working at the state level to develop core competencies so people understand what are the key skills that we need direct care workers to have in order for them to be successful.

And I know some people are like, okay, more requirements, more this, more that. But the reality is with that core competency development can be more formalized training opportunities. It's better pay, better funding through the state mechanisms that are out there. So it's really exciting to create a formal structure through IMPART Alliance where we have these core competencies, where we're having conversations, where we're advocating for direct care workers and not only for, but with direct care workers at the state level where they have a voice and can say, these are what we need in order to provide critical supports and services to people in the community because the reality is we are all impacted by this whether we're a caregiver, whether we need a caregiver or whether we'll need one someday, and I know that's a common phrase people say and quote people use, but at the same time, it is a invisible epidemic that we face in our community, that there are people without the supports and services they need in their homes, invisible, where people might not know about what the direct-care worker or the person receiving services might be aware of and we work really hard at the state level I think and as various agencies across our entire state to work to understand that to create quality caregivers and provide training and resources, but we are just I guess at the tip of the iceberg of developing additional resources to be able to really meet the huge need that's out there in the community.

And so we want to continue to educate people that this is a wonderful career choice, that we need to value direct-care workers as a critical part of the health care team. And Age Alive is doing some great work on the aging side, and IMPART Alliance is doing a lot of work to advocate for direct-care workers and those they care for. So it's hard to just summarize what IMPART Alliance does in just a couple of words, but it's really exciting to see the recognition for the amazing work that it's doing. And it not only wants to, you know, accomplish these things and be a direct-care workforce center, but to also pull in and empower all of these other community organizations and individuals across the state to be successful themselves. So being able to share those resources and to make a stronger Michigan in a way that we are better prepared to give people meaningful work opportunities as direct care workers as well as provide quality care to the people in their home.

[00:15:40] Tracy Anderson: And I think if you think about Age Alive and In Part and the connections that they collectively create, it's just natural to call it that. age alive in part sister organization because there's a lot of overlap and a lot of those connecting points that are crucial for both Organizations and you know one thing that you had talked about.

Yes, absolutely direct care workers at some point in time in our life We will need a direct care worker or we will need that support for a family member. We never know what life will bring if we need care for a spouse or a partner or a child, oftentimes it can be seen as just as the aging population or for seniors, but that's not the case at all.

And unfortunately, sometimes we don't realize that until we ourselves are looking for direct care support for somebody we love to make sure they're cared for. So I think a lot of the effort, the collective effort from both organizations, bringing that to light and everything you do in the communities here in the Upper Peninsula, we absolutely appreciate your partnership and your advocacy and, and all the ground that you cover because you do a lot in your job alone.

And I know that that changes probably day to day, different things come up and you find yourself in another area. And I don't know, maybe you could talk a little bit about how you, you, you yourself balance that.

[00:17:04] Heather Picotte: Well, it's not always easy because there's so many organizations, not just within the Aging Network, but everybody who is trying to do the best they can.

We have faced some challenges post pandemic, trying to get back into the workforce and to find care and to also just find meaningful work and, and find things that we can just move forward in life in a positive way. And I think that I want to create good things in the world. I see my role as trying to connect people to make good things happen, to try to approach life in a positive manner and trying to balance all of that can be very, very challenging, especially when you see many organizations in a rural community with limited resources.

We have high housing costs, high food costs and a lot of areas that are being affected by that with limited access to caregivers. It's overwhelming sometimes, and, but at the same time, when we can take a moment to sit down and really think about how each of us can kind of come to the table collaboratively, break down silos and start talking openly about the challenges and the opportunities that we can do to work together, I think we can accomplish a lot more.

And I'm excited to be a part of what we're doing with IMPART. And there are a number of different organizations I work with. I work with, AFC Hospice Support Service Agency here in town in Marquette, Trillium House that does some wonderful work with direct-care workers providing care to individuals who are enrolled in hospice with our local hospice agencies and they have needs and, you know, challenges and opportunities to explore.

Caregiver Incentive Project, one of our community partners in IMPART Alliance, you know, I work with them to connect them with Empowered Alliance and other community resources in trying to just find that balance of connecting people to resources and then finding a way to develop capacity within not only other organizations and groups, but within myself too, by making those connections with people. So we're not all doing it alone. 

At its core, I think when we talk about, we're here to talk about direct-care workforce stuff. I can't help but think we really need to all start having these conversations throughout our lives. Not just when we're thinking, okay, when I get older, I'm gonna have to worry about this, or my parents are getting older, a loved one, a friend is getting older.

We have to start thinking about direct-care work and aging-related issues. This is something that we should, as a society, we need to continue to work on getting more comfortable with having those conversations together. Because I think if we can start to have those conversations, we can start to become more aware of what the real issues are and start to work through them.

Because it's such a complex network of things that we need to do to not only create a meaningful work environment for direct care workers, where they can feel empowered and be compensated well and have the right training and resources, but also have people in their homes who are not only being cared for, but are also in being empowered to live their lives in the way that they want.

So. I, I hope that we can continue to do that by the work we're doing within part Alliance Age Alive and in each of us, you know, being able to open ourselves up to having those conversations about aging and what we can do together.

[00:20:21] Tracy Anderson: It truly is a collective effort, and we appreciate your piece in all of this.

And, we thank you so much for your time today. This was a great conversation with you. 

[00:20:31] Heather Picotte: Before we wrap up here, Heather, is there anything else that you wanted to include or mention? 

I just am grateful for all the work that IMPART Alliance is doing and Age Alive and its inclusion of individuals and organizations in the Upper Peninsula and the investment of the state in supporting organizations and groups in the UP to be a collaborative part of this process in a real meaningful way, and to bring direct-care workers and the cared for to the table. So, together we can create a huge impact.

[00:21:03] Tracy Anderson: Yes, yes we can. Well, thank you again for your time. We appreciate it.

[00:21:06] Heather Picotte: Thank you.