How will you ensure the needs of your community are met?

Write a 175- to 265-word response to the following:

How do you think community programs and services will change over the next 10 years?

How will you ensure the needs of your community are met? Provide specific examples.

Read and respond to the two discussion posts below. Be constructive and professional with your thoughts, feedback, or suggestions.

1. In the next ten years, community programs and services will need to expand and adapt to the changing and increasing needs of those requiring long-term care services. As our text stated, the baby boomers are rapidly entering retirement age at a rate of 10,000 people per day (Pratt, 2016). As the elder population continues to grow at extreme rates, programs and services will need to be provided at varying levels of age. An 80 year old may not want or appreciate the same care or program tactics that a 65 year old may like; therefore, there needs to programs and services that provide a large spectrum of care and service tactics to meet the needs and desires of the varying aging populations. Also, regarding programs and services future trends will require them to be more culturally diverse with multilingual speakers. Our text stated that the aging population is the most culturally diverse, multilingual, with varying care beliefs than ever before (Pratt, 2016). Programs and services will need to have varying cultural tactics to meet the needs of a diverse aging population to be successful. However, one serious problem that needs to be addressed in order for any program and service trend to be successful, is the lack of trained workforce. My personal research has shown that to be an instructor in many healthcare fields does not pay near as much as actually working in the field itself. Therefor, the numbers of trained individuals entering various fields is much lower than it should be. For instance, A Physician Assistant program here in Colorado has 1600 applicants apply annually. Of those applicants, only 44 make up the class die to the lack of professors to teach.

To overcome these challenges, first we need to entice more people to teach over the entire education spectrum by offering better pay and benefit packages. This should be seen down to elementary status where in our area a school counselor, requiring a Master’s degree, will only make $40,000 per year. This is ridiculous when a person without any degree can make the same amount. Second, program and service administrators should always be working to uncover new strategies and utilizing SWOT analysis to be ahead of the aging and cultural trend curve.

Pratt, J. R. (2016). Long-term care: Managing across the continuum (4^th ed.). Retrieved from the University of Phoenix eBook Collection database.

2. In the past long term care facilities felt like closed off cubes and kind of like a psychiatric hospital. Seniors were not given any choices to their needs and wants. They had no parts in their individualized plans, received no preventive services, had no say in the type if food they eat, and there was no access to activities for stimulation. Seniors were sent to these facilities to basically die because their loved ones couldn’t take care of them and there were not many facilities to choose from. Today, facilities are completely different. Clients have a say in their care, educational options are available, more food variety, and they can pick and choose where they want to say. Medicaid and Medicare funded facilities still have a long way to go. Most are understaffed, high level of employee turnover and burnout. The most important things are the clients are not receiving the care they deserve. In the future facilities will pay which will allow more staff, less turnover burnout. Clients have focus on their care without waiting so long to be seen due to low volume of staff. Clients will have a choice of different facilities. More and more home health agencies will be created so seniors can live at home and receive the same quality of care they would have received at a facility. Unfortunately, there will be an increase of diseases some new and old but with the growing technology and research many seniors won’t have to fight them in a facility in the future.

Reference

Pratt, J. R. (2016). Long-Term Care Managing Across the Continuum (4th ed.). Retrieved from https://phoenix.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781284091342/cfi/6/66!/4/2@0:0.