Residents' rights week

Oct. 5-11 is National Long-Term Care Residents' Rights Week, a time to acknowledge the contributions many long-term care residents have made to better our community.

This year's theme, Recipe for Home: Creating and Defining Home in Long-Term Care Facilities, emphasizes the importance of empowering residents of long-term care facilities to define what home means to them and for others to honor their choices. This enhances the residents' quality of life as well as the work environment for staff members and results in less turnover and improved care.

We invite our communities to celebrate and acknowledge residents' rights by participating in the week's events and local long-term care facilities to show their support by organizing activities. During residents' rights week, we recognized our local long-term care ombudsman program staff and volunteers who work daily to promote residents' rights, assist residents with complaints and provide information to those who need to find a long-term care facility.

In this area, the ombudsman program of Southeast Missouri Area Agency on Aging serves 18 counties with over 150 facilities. Region 2 has 43 trained ombudsman volunteers.

As director of the Region 2 Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program, I encourage community members to visit someone they know in a long-term care facility, volunteer in a facility, participate in residents' rights week events or inquire about becoming a volunteer long-term care ombudsman. Your assistance and attention helps to ensure that the voices of long-term care residents do not go unheard and demonstrates to residents that they have not been forgotten.

If you have any questions about the program or would like to become a volunteer, please call 335-3331 or 1-800-392-8771.

Jan McFerron is the director of the Region 2 Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program at the Southeast Missouri Area Agency on Aging in Cape Girardeau.