In many nursing homes, resident councils have long hung in the shadows, operating as a requirement but not always informing quality efforts or programming.
Now moving into its third year, the Moving Forward Coalition is pouring resources into the concept to ensure councils play a key role in making the nursing home experience more person-centered.
“This is a way to really enhance the lives of both those living in and working in nursing homes,” said Mairead Painter, project team leader and Connecticut’s long-term care ombudsman.
The coalition recently published a 50-page guide to help facilities and external stakeholders work together to strengthen resident councils. A three-year pilot and research project will focus on how the strategies included in the guide, still a work in progress, help bolster residents’ contributions to their communities.
Painter has previously noted a tendency “to view resident councils as supplementary to nursing home operations.” This project is meant to help bring council input to the core of nursing home decision making.
On a Thursday webinar highlighting the pilot and the coalition’s other ongoing efforts, Painter said it’s not just residents and their advocates who have embraced the resident council work. When the coalition put out a call for pilot participants, so many nursing home corporate offices reached out, she had to institute a selection process.
“We’ve had an overwhelming response,” she said.
Participants should be finalized by November, but Painter said she expects most of Connecticut’s 233 nursing homes eventually would adopt the new strategies, whether involved in the pilot or not.
Model for the nation?
Following 18 months of work in which selected councils will meet weekly, led by volunteer coaches, researchers will study results and recommend further revisions to the resident council guide.
“This is something we hope to see be used and pushed out around the country,” Painter said.
The current guide is publicly available, along with a companion Guide to Addressing Resident Goals, Preferences and Priorities.
The council guide emphasizes that a successful group needs the support of staff and the administrator, who can glean their own benefits from regular, robust conversations.
“Resident Councils provide opportunities to create mutually supportive relationships in efforts to improve the care and services in the nursing home,” it says, offering ways to remove barriers between staff and residents as they address issues that arise. “Council members and leaders can work together collaboratively to address concerns, complaints, and recommendations. There are many benefits to Council members and the administrator partnering with all staff to discover solutions to common challenges through dialogue.”
The coalition was formed to prioritize and help bring to reality recommendations included in the landmark 2022 National Academies report on American nursing homes. Earlier this summer, it received a second large grant from the John. A Hartford Foundation to continue its workforce efforts, strengthen resident councils and engage more residents in informing the coalition’s work.
Other focus areas as the coalition moves into its third year include helping to improve the federal survey process — a concern Bonner said has routinely been brought up by residents, their advocates and providers — and drive more investment in facilities.
“To create the change in nursing homes that we want to see, we’re going to have to invest in nursing homes,” Moving Forward Director Isaac Longobardi said during the session.
The coalition will hold its next webinar Sept. 11, which is when it plans to provide a more detailed update on the resident council project.
