UMAINE CENTER ON AGING

Maine’s average population may continue to grow older, but the studies about the shortage of caregivers for the elderly spring eternally youthful. The newest of these, like its predecessors, argues that the shortage of certified nursing assistants, home health aides and others already is affecting Maine’s elderly, and that many more people will be needed in these and allied fields. No doubt true and important.

The Maine Center for Economic Policy (MCEP) recently offered “Without Care: Maine’s Direct Care Worker Shortage,” describing the increasing shortages of front-line workers in the care business and making several suggestions for improvement, including a committee and better coordinated training. Its report is similar in many ways to a more ambitious report from October 2001 called “Maine’s Health Care Skilled Worker Shortage: A Call to Action” and to a couple of others from the last five years. All point to the need for more and better-coordinated training.

What has changed since those reports started coming out is that the Center on Aging at the University of Maine, founded a year ago, has attempted to solve exactly the problems described. Like most new centers, its ambitions are limited by a lack of funds, but if the elder-care industry is as desperate for someone to carry out solutions as the reports suggest, the answer lies in supporting this new center or finding charitable foundations that can.

The center is one of those small places – just a couple of full-time staff – that asks big questions. In its case, it wants to know what is required to live with decency in the later years of life, a question many people ponder silently and fearfully. The center provides education and training to caregivers, does research and evaluation and offers some direct service through the Retired and Senior Volunteer Program (RSVP)in Penobscot and Piscataquis counties.

The MCEP study observed that low pay, stressful working conditions, lack of adequate training, physical job demands and inadequate social recognition are pushing people out of the direct-care field. The lack of money – low government reimbursement paired with the crippling cost of redundancy and endless amounts of medical paperwork – accounts for many but not all of the problems that come from the difficulties listed in the study. Yet because of the already high cost of care generally, finding solutions that do not simply call for more money is crucial.

That’s where the UMaine Center on Aging comes in. It was designed specifically to provide expertise on aging-related issues and to solve the increasingly apparent problems in the health care as they affect Maine’s older citizens. It’s not the final word on these tough issues, but it clearly could serve as a partner in linking care facilities and employees, research and practice, seniors and an improved quality of life. Maine has had plenty of studies describing the problems. It now has a Center on Aging that, with the proper support, could help solve them.