Modern society busy lifestyles, taking care of children, driving them helter-skelter from one activity to the other, double income parents and working over time, have left us little time for our parents. Some struggle under the weight of having to look after ailing parents and their small children. Many women are also choosing to have children later than soon. As a result a golden opportunity has opened up for entrepreneurs to make good dollars taking care of our parents. Making money on vulnerable people is not so bad if the services in a lot of these places measured up to even a quarter of what we might have given our parents.
I know our society tells us we owe our parents nothing. After all we did not ask to be born and once they had us it was their responsibility to care and provide for us. That is true. They did not have to love us. There are many children who have been unfortunate to have parents who provided the minimum without love or care. Those children were the ones who had been badly used, abused and violated.
Our parents might have struggled with us trying to provide the best, some leaving their own needs unmet so that we would have a better live. They loved us to our faults and in the end we leave them to rot in the care of strangers, who view them as patients, even when they are not. The only thing that may be the matter is that our folks have grown old and cannot take care of themselves.
I am not saying we should have be shackled to our parents for life but when they need us most, if they had been good to us, we should be there for them. I think a child should make room in their lives for their elderly parents. They can do this by having a special room built within their home for their parents and if someone had to take care of them, they should do so within the home where the child can supervise the care their parents receive.
Spending a solitary life without family in a sterile institution must be the hardest and loneliest time for a human being.
Having older people around is a great education for our children. They must learn about the seasons of life early, we are young and active today and tomorrow we grow old and prepare to die. It’s all part of life. Dying can be a family event.
Seniors home are raking in millions for investors in homes run with minimum staff and high fees and little care.
The New York Times analyzed trends at nursing homes purchased by private investment groups by examining data available from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services.
The Times examined more than 1,200 nursing homes purchased by large private investment groups since 2000, and more than 14,000 other homes. The analysis compared investor-owned homes against national averages in multiple categories, including complaints received by regulators, health and safety violations cited by regulators, fines levied by state and federal authorities, the performance of homes as reported in a national database known as the Minimum Data Set Repository and the performance of homes as reported in the Online Survey, Certification and Reporting database.
The result is not good. The research reveals that at 60 percent of homes bought by large private equity groups from 2000 to 2006, managers have cut the number of clinical registered nurses, sometimes far below levels required by law. (At 19 percent of those homes, staffing has remained relatively constant, though often below national averages. At 21 percent, staffing rose significantly, though even those homes were typically below national averages.) During that period, staffing at many of the nation’s other homes has fallen much less or grown.
We can delve into all the the findings. The bottom line is there are not many places or services that would be better than the loving care of a son or daughter, or grandchild to their ailing parents. I think it should be seen as a privilege to be able to take care of your parents, to loving feed and pamper them so that they may go to their final resting place feeling the love and know that they have done something good in this world by having you as a child. Let us stop the rat race and start treating our parents with the respect they deserve to the end. When our time come, there will be no need to fear you would have taught your children that in the world of the human family, we have responsibility to each other. Families take care of each other. Businessmen should not be allowed to make millions off our loved ones.
