Why all the fuss? Mel Matsumoto, executive vice president of the
Masonic Homes, recalls visiting a retirement community where the
Masterpiece Living program was already in full swing. The community was tackling a familiar problem: residents’ walkers were
crowding the dining hall and creating potential fire hazards. The
expected solution was to rearrange the dining room. But instead,
the community worked with residents to build up their mobility –
and reduce the number of walkers.
What may take longest is this shift in perspective. But better start
now: the field of aging services is changing.
“The baby boomers are the generation of 17 varieties of coffee at
Starbucks,” says Matsumoto. “They’re not going to be happy with a
one-size-fits-all view of care services. We think it’s only appropriate
for our residents to be partners in their care. The incoming residents
are going to demand it.”
a new way of reaching ou T
In 2009, in response to the economic downturn, the Masonic
Homes created a new branch of outreach for members under age
60: Masonic Family Outreach. In the past year, the program has
connected clients to local social services like food banks and the
Employment Development Department, helped them obtain public
benefits, hosted resource fairs, even provided assistance moving or
obtaining transportation to medical appointments.
Here, it’s also about empowerment.
“We’re not here to fix people’s lives,” says Sabrina Montes, director of Masonic Outreach. “Yes, we improve them. But we do it by
helping our clients think about their situations, and their choices.”
Read more about the Masterpiece Living aging initiative
at mymasterpieceliving.com.
eb extra
Family Outreach is modeled after the
Homes’ highly successful Senior Outreach
Program. It, too, runs on the clients’ ability to
decide what’s best.
“We’ve moved away from the mentality that
care managers know best, and we’re going to
tell you what to do,” Montes says. “Now we
partner with clients by putting the options in
front of them. They make the choices.”
The demand for choice is accelerating a
trend towards home- and community-based
aging services, meaning that the programs
through Masonic Outreach are growing more
and more relevant.
“People used to kid about ‘when I’m in a
nursing home’ as if it were inevitable,” says
Joanne Handy, president and CEO of Aging
Services in California. “Not any more. Look at
the growth of home health care, hospice, pri-
vate health care services.”
In a recent AARP study, 80 to 85 per-
cent of those asked said that if they needed
help, they would prefer to receive it in their
homes. “Seniors today are very different from
those who will become seniors in the next 20
years,” Montes points out. “The baby boom-
ers have different expectations of what senior
life should look like. They want the built-in
choices of staying at home.”
