Destination was a lunch buffet with fellow residents on facility’s transport bus. Residents signed up to go. He was told he needed an aide for hire in order for him to go. He was refused entrance on the bus.
He feels discrimination regarding using the bus.
The facility also insists he rents an aide when leaving for doctor appointments when taking the provided transportation.
Despite his mobility handicap and slow pace, he wants to prove he does not need help.
The management appears to be discriminating upon his ADA rights. He does not have the extra funds for an aide that his facility is insisting he employ from them. He does fall, but can get himself back on his feet.
He always needs his walker, but is competent and stubborn.
This recent incident has the potential to isolate him from his independent lifestyle, since he does not drive a car.
The bus driver’s do not want the liability for him falling while he is on their bus. I think they have been told by management not to give him any assistance.
Next event is a baseball game outing, which they insist he has an aide to go.
He is slow moving, needs a handicap seat. The social service coordinator said” there are many steps where the seating has been reserved”. They have not made provisions for handicap seating for him.
He can get himself to bathrooms, get items from concession stands, etc. all independently, but he is slow.
He should be able to attend without paying for an aide to go on outings organized by his independent living facility.
The “paternalistic” nature demonstrated by his facility’s administration is starting to impinge his independence. It appears they have litigious concerns. They are ignoring his needs for independence due to his mobility challenges. He does not require assisted living yet, but that appears to be what the administrators are trying to persuade him to move into. He does not want to lose his privacy and autonomy.
Since ADA laws apply to employment and housing accommodations, it seems my father has limited recourse to stand his ground to access the transportation bus provided by his facility.
Can these impositions be legal?
Is this being singled out even OK?
I can’t even tell if the ADA applies to this facility. It definitely applies to public places like the ballpark itself, but there are seats there. It definitely applied to long-term care and nursing homes, bit It doesn’t seem to apply to “ purely residential facilities that provide “no services “, from the link below (Which is about the ADA and senior facilities). And even then whether it applies to the activities and transportation that they supply (vs construction requirements) gets even murkier.
For this one, I suspect you’ll need a lawyer I am afraid.
https://leadingage.org/wp-content/uploads/drupal/The%20Fair%20Housing%20Act%20and%20the%20ADA.pdf
Dad wants to go to the lunch this week at the VFW. He has a motorized wheelchair and the facility does have a bus. But I'm wondering how this will work.. I'll have to ask at the front desk before he goes. I'd hate to have him get excited to go and them say "you need an aid in order to go"
Please know that in the large metro county where I live, their senior bus system also requires a competent companion to travel with someone who has any risk issues: falling, memory, etc. No business wants to have the very real liability of being responsible for a bus full of elderly people who are all higher risk. And what about the poor bus drivers if one of their passengers falls? Are they expected to wreck their backs picking them up off the floor? Then what about the other passengers who have appointments who now have to wait for EMTs to show up? The drivers and their companies do not want that liability because they can get sued. My MIL was such a driver for the county. She was 65+ when she was doing it.
If your Dad doesn't want to lose his "autonomy" then he can do it in a private residence without imposing it on others. He can be all by himself pretending he is independent. He will soon learn that one's autonomy at 90+ gets whittled away whether they like it or not. It's called reality.
The transport company is correct in taking their stand and requiring an aid, and your Dad benefits from and is protected by this rule.
Does the driver give ANYONE else assistance when they get on the facility provided transportation?
Is his pace holding up a scheduled trip?
I would think if the driver helps ANYONE else then they should help him as well.
If others needing help are not required to hire an aide then he should not either.
Are there others that go at the same pace he does, if his pace is preventing a schedule from being met I understand that but an aide would not hurry him so that seems unlikely.
If others are paying for an aide and he can not afford it he could ask at the local Senior Center if they have a Volunteer program that would provide a volunteer that could be with him. The problem with that is if he does need help would a volunteer be able to help? I know when I volunteer at Hospice I can not do "hands on" care.
When I had my Husband in a Day program at a local facility I would check the calendar and if there was someplace they were taking the group I would let them know that we would be going and I would go with the group so that I could help my Husband. (I also helped with others if I could.)
Maybe that would be an option for you or other family member.
My first adventure in elder maze was last millennium for an “Aunt” who named me to be her Executor. & to my surprise too. She had done a buy-in at a CCRC. Nice garden style sm independent apt. She died within couple of months of moving in & for even more fun in this, she still had her old home that she not quite had cleared to put up for sale. The CCRC would NOT allow anyone to stay at her place at all, as Executor I could go during the day but if I was to try to get a meal there, I would have to be a guest of another resident. Management did immense foot dragging on approving its sale to prospective buyer too. They acted on the egregious landlord type of playbook. I’m still salty about it….
If this is discrimination then it is singling someone out for extra help so as to protect him in the humble opinion of this retired RN. Many seniors meet the end of the road with a fall and my own mother died after a fall that led to more and more problems and finally death. Because a driver is prevented from helping due to liability and training issues there is a need seen here by the admins and they have decided this issue on the care plan of your elder.
Often doctors are involved as well, and if you get a doctor to attest to your 90 year old dad's independence despite his mobility issue, and you sign a waiver, then perhaps you can change all this. I would caution you to watch what you wish for.
In general, here on the forum we see more complaints about not enough care. I am certain there are financial concerns, but I would ask you to recognize that there may be some truth in this need.
It's not the job of the facility or the transportation company to enable your father's belief that his mobility challenges are theirs to accommodate. As long as he's in independent living, the onus is on him to hire the help he needs.
Your father is a high fall risk because he's already had a fall. This is known. And yet you seem to think that he's being discriminated against when it sounds like both the facility and the bus driver are just trying to keep him safe and make sure that he has the assistance he needs. Perhaps it's time you had a chat with your dad and helped him understand that.
Don't know how that will affect his going on outings, but it will offer him the much needed assistance that he needs for his daily living, and should give you peace of mind that at least someone is checking in on him periodically.
And of course if he is a fall risk, someone should be with him when he goes out, as anything can happen in a blink of an eye.
Time for a reality check for you and him about just how truly not independent he really is.
Imho someone who does not extra funds for something as minimal in cost as an aide for an outing should not have ever done a buy-in for a CCRC. CCRCs are not 1 sum & done. CCCR are set up in contractual obligations to take care of housing, property maintenance, meals, transportation, activities with personal assistance such as medical/ healthcare based on a residents ability and the level of care the resident is in at the CCRC with maximums set. What CCRC do is charge A La Carte fees if a resident goes past the max type of services provided as per contract for the level they are in. It’s a “life plan format” that most CCRC use to bill for this.
By this I mean, if you are in IL then you are fully expected to be able to go on your own about your day in your apt / condo / sm townhome and go to the meals and activities the CCRC has planned. If you need help on those ADLs to the point that this places significant issues to yourself AND others then you move up and over into the AL sector or you pay for whatever accommodation needed. For your dad, the accommodation is that he hires an aide to accompany him on any outings. Might be complaints from other residents on his inabilities to “keep up”. He’s not being discriminated against; he’s being accommodated.
What could be a path to take in this is for Dad to have an outside assessment done to see how IL he is or isn’t, this way you have some control over what the CCRC may want to have happen. Otherwise my guess is Dad is either going to have to realize he cannot go to any outside activities ever OR he moves into AL category OR you set up an account you 100% pay for to have the CCRC hire an aide. Something is going to have decided as Dad is going to have a doctors appointment in the near future that has to be figured out for it’s logistics.
I know this isn’t what you want to hear. Review his contract. Usually the life plan has zero assistance in IL; a certain a # of hours that assistance is provided for in AL at no extra cost as it’s included in the buy-in; only specific type of care done in the NH sector. Let’s say it’s 14 hrs of assistance a week if in AL sector as per contract terms, but a AL resident needs 19 hrs. Those additional 5 hrs are billed to the resident as it’s done on an A La Carte system for CCRC. Again, if right now he flat does not have the $ for an aide for a single evening, he will not be able to pay costs when his care increases.
I’ve got to ask… So is this a CCRC under the Springpoint umbrella? If so, how long ago did Dad do his buy-in? Is he within the withdrawal period? Please please pls asap review the very detailed contract your Dad did with this CCRC to see what his options are.
If this were my father, I'd want him to have assistance during outings as well. Independent Senior Living means the senior has to be independent and not reliant on mobility devices to get around. It's unrealistic for dad to expect to attend a baseball game with tons of steps to climb, it's too dangerous! I have limited mobility myself and use a cane.....there is no way on God's green earth I'd even try to climb a bunch of outdoor steps alone w/o my husband to help me stay safe. I'm not trying to prove anything to anybody at 66.....I'm just trying to prevent myself from getting a broken neck. Which is what the CCRC is trying to prevent with your father.
Try to use logic and reason here instead of a knee jerk reaction to this facility using "discrimination" against your father!
Dad goes on these trips, needs to use the bathroom, other residents maken it back to the bus or are waiting for him before leaving. Some could get pissed at having to wait when they're ready to go.
Besides lunch buffet, probably 1 or more residents would need to use the bathroom, that could take time for some. Baseball outing, same thing.
Dad could be glad not sad to not deal with this.
First world problems at their finest.
from online:
"dis·crim·i·nat·ing
[dəˈskriməˌnādiNG]
adjective
(of a person) having or showing refined taste or good judgment:
"he became a discriminating collector and patron of the arts".
This place is showing good judgement. They are singling dad out as someone who has mobility issues, has fallen, will fall, and is deserving of protection that cannot be afforded by a simple driver untrained and unable to assist a bus full of elders.
Our OP is, in my humble opinion in denial about the needs of her dad; which is a shame. As I said, a fall for elders often is the beginning of the end. They die of some other "diagnosis" but so often it begins with a fall and a hospitalization, and it goes from there.
I don’t think a bus driver should be expected to help a resident . They just drive the bus . They are not trained to help the residents.
Dad falls a lot , Dad uses his walker but wants to prove he’s independent .
My own father in law used a walker and fell a lot, he was denied admission to independent living because of this , and had to go to AL . Until the day he died he complained about that.
My mother in law uses a cane and falls a lot in part because she should be using a walker . She puts too much weight on the cane and it gives way to one side or the other. A cane is not meant to be a crutch and have much weight put on it . She bear crawls up her stairs in her home , then crawls over to the bed to stand up. She won’t get a stair lift or move to an apartment or independent living with no stairs. I don’t think independent living would even take her . Her roommate at home now helps her dress due to severe arthritis in her shoulders . She only uses the cane when she leaves the house because she can not walk without it. Inside the house she holds on to furniture, walls and people if any are there .
The point I’m making is a lot of elderly claim to be independent, and want to keep proving it when in fact they aren’t .
Staff at my IL do their very best to offer a little "extra" assistance when they can BUT when residents routinely need extra help, there is a schedule of fees. There is only so much staff time and they need to be available to all residents to provide contracted services. When there is a resident who needs extra services, making demands/requests, it takes away from the time the staff needs to be spending for all of the residents.
At my IL facility we have some longer term older residents who think that whatever they need should be provided by the facility. That's not how it works. We moved here so that we could remain independent as long as possible knowing if that we started to require additional help we could pay an aid for as long as possible or we could move to assisted living.
At my IL as folks continue to age this is becoming more of a problem. We have folks who can't keep up with technology--no memory issues at all-- who are constantly asking for someone to fix the TV or computer or figure out their cell phones, help them order groceries online, call an Uber for them. Staff tries to be helpful but they have regular duties and responsibilities and there's only so much time. The facility is pretty close to starting to charge for this kind of assistance (they already charge if someone cannot safely get to a doctor's appointment or outing alone even with the facility provided transportation. We've started a resident volunteer committee to help.
Perhaps visualising this will help you work out other ways to cope, or at a minimum make the facility’s attitude a bit more understandable - or even easier to complain about, if you have really good answers.
The parents were irate that I called an ambulance to have him checked out at the ER . It took the parents over an hour to call me back when I left a messages that the boy passed out and I couldn’t wake him up and that he was on his way to the ER . They were also irate that they now had to drive over an hour to the hospital he was taken to.
Many kids were sent with fevers , throwing up on the bus etc . Every one of these kids were miserable and wished they were home playing video games or sleeping . I was one nurse with 400 kids . I was there to give daily meds to children and help the diabetics as I did everyday in school . But some parents thought I was on the trips to mother their sick children who should have stayed home . I did not have a potable cot strapped to my back for their child to lie down .
They would also send kids on crutches who were miserable because they couldn’t keep up .
Your Dad has the great potential for needing help due to falls , send trained help along with him , or you be his chaperone . Otherwise he needs to go in AL and go on their trips where staff can help him .
Field trips though are a different matter. At the ccrc that dh works at, trips are labeled as easy, moderate, and active.
The baseball game trips are definitely in the active category.
rights point of view. Is there anything in a contract that your dad signed that might address this type of problem?
I would be very interested in learning the results of your phone calls. I have in the past used a state rep. to intervene when a nursing home was violating a patients' rights. It might be worth a call to see what you can learn.
I think your father is a strong man to hold on to his independence. Good for him.
Good luck with this.
Seems to me Dad is in Independent living and no longer fits the criteria for independent living. He needs more help than IL is willing to give him. My Aunt is living independently with her husband in a Senior Community. They take care of each other for now in their mid 90s. If they want to stay independent but need some services, like an aide to bathe them, they must pay for it. Med planners done for them, they pay for that. Independent living is just that, you don't need any help, if you do, u pay for it.
This does not fall under the American Disabilities Act. He signed a contract. IL means just that, he can do his ADLs with no outside help. When he needs help with those ADLs, he hires someone or he moves onto an AL. When his care gets too much for AL he moves on to LTC.
The CCRC is not responsible to make sure he has an aide if living independently. Him requiring an aide maybe a liability thing. Maybe its time for Dad to realize that he does need help. He is no longer as independent as he was. Time to go to AL. Read Dads contract.