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August 15, 2023
In this Issue:
- Can't-Miss Sessions at the Consumer Voice Conference
- Resident's Voice Challenge Entries Due September 1
- There's Still Time to Send a Message to Congress About Staffing in Nursing Homes
- New Residents' Rights Products Available for Pre-order
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Can't-Miss Sessions at the Consumer Voice Conference
 Join us for the for the 47th Consumer Voice Conference October 31 - November 1 at the Hilton Baltimore Inner Harbor (livestreaming is available). Don't miss this one-of-a-kind conference covering long-term care issues, including current trends, best practices, advocacy opportunities, and new research. Attendees have the opportunity to learn, network, and exchange ideas with consumer advocates from all over the country.
Sessions (available in-person and livestreaming) include:
- Strategies for Avoiding Unnecessary Guardianships
- Using Federal Law to Protect Assisted Living Residents
- Advocating for Residents During the Decertification of America's Largest Nursing Home
- The Impact of Administrative Staff on Quality Reforms for System-Wide Transformation
- Community Response to Improved Nursing Home Care
- HCBS Transition Strategies for Nursing Home Residents
- The Outliers: Some Nursing Homes Beat the Odds
- Understaffing Litigation in Nursing Facilities
- Balancing Infection Control and Residents' Rights in Nursing Home Communities
- Transformational Change Within Organizations, Systems, and Communities to Support "Good Lives for All People"
- How Individual Advocacy Can Impact the World
- Brief Interventions for Implementation of Trauma-Informed Care
- Food Equity Advocacy Strategies in Long-Term Care Services and Supports
- Using Data in Systems Advocacy
Recordings of the above sessions will be available to all attendees for 90 days. In-person attendees will have access to additional sessions, networking events, and roundtable discussions.
View the preliminary agenda.
Learn more about the conference and register.
In-Person Attendees: If you have already registered or are planning on registering, we recommend you make your hotel reservation as soon as possible. More rooms have been added to the block, but it is filling very quickly.
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Resident's Voice Challenge Entries Due September 1
 Creative writing and artistic expression are meaningful and compelling ways to highlight the importance of residents’ rights and how these rights can be carried out in all long-term care settings. The Resident’s Voice Challenge, a part of Residents' Rights Month in October, encourages residents to submit essays, poems, artwork, drawings, or videos related to the theme.
This year’s theme emphasizes a community of long-term care residents coming together to make their voices heard. As part of the Resident’s Voice Challenge, we are inviting residents to create videos amplifying their voices. Residents are encouraged to create a video sharing who you are and how you amplify your voice by answering the questions: What does it mean to be heard and how do you make yourself heard? Alternatively, residents can respond to the Resident’s Voice Challenge in writing (essays, poems, word collages), artwork (posters, paintings, drawings), audio (songs or spoken word), or photos.
Visit our website for more information on how to participate. Submissions are due September 1, 2023.
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There's Still Time to Send a Message to Congress About Staffing in Nursing Homes
 On February 28, 2023, President Biden announced a historic set of nursing home reforms. The centerpiece of these reforms was the promise to create a minimum staffing standard in nursing homes. For the first time, nursing homes will be required to provide, at a minimum, a certain amount of direct care each day to each resident. Since this announcement, residents, families, nursing home workers, and their advocates have been working tirelessly to support the Biden proposal.
Over twenty years ago, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) commissioned a study that found that a nursing home resident needed, at a minimum, at least 4.1 hours of direct care per day (hpd). Since then, nursing home residents have become sicker and in need of more care, while more functional individuals choose to remain at home. Any minimum staffing standard below 4.1 hpd will be unacceptable.
The nursing home industry is spending millions of dollars to try and derail this historic reform by the Biden Administration. Nursing Home residents need your help!
If you have not already, please take 5 minutes to use our online form to send a message to your members of Congress urging them to support a strong staffing standard in nursing homes. For more information about the need for a strong staffing standard, visit our policy page.
Thank you to all those who have already taken this action!
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New Residents' Rights Products Available for Pre-order
New products and resources are available for pre-order from the Consumer Voice Store. (Items will ship September 1.)
 Staying Engaged Enrichment Booklet - The 2023 edition of the Staying Engaged enrichment booklet has a variety of activities aiming to keep you mentally engaged, prompt self-reflection, and help you meet and get to know the community of people around you. Included in the activities are tic-tac-toe, word searches, crosswords, sudoku, trivia, self-reflection prompts, an ice breaker scavenger hunt, and art pages.
 "Please Knock" Door Hangers - These newly redesigned door hangers remind anyone who enters a resident's room that this is their home and assert residents' rights. The pack includes 100 door hangers, printed in sharp, full-color on sturdy card stock with glossy UV coating on one side.
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"I Love Residents' Rights" Pencil Pouch - These durable PVC pencil pouches (5 3/4" H x 9 3/4" W) can hold writing instruments and more. The pouches come with a mesh divider and display an "I Love Residents' Rights" logo on the front.
For these products and more, visit the Consumer Voice Store.
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