Q: As a former skilled nursing administrator and executive director, why did you want to write “A Kids Book About Long-Term Care” and why now?
A: After being a long-term care leader through the COVID19 pandemic, I was driven to bring real solutions that will lift up conversations with an intergenerational lens. Care is happening in all of our families and all of our communities and it’s often not talked about. We need to find real solutions to combat isolation and loneliness and build ways for people of all ages to connect to community.
Q: How are you making the difficult terminology and subject matter of nursing homes accessible to kids?
A: It is so important as a kids book author to make sure that we really break things down for readers of all ages. This book is a read-together book and that means that a kid and an adult reader share and engage on the subject together. … The book is not the end. The book is the beginning. So you have this great conversation and then you and your adult go and find out, ‘Hey, what good works are these organizations doing that I can get involved in?’
Q: What is your hope for this book? How might it impact kids, families and the long-term care sector more broadly?
A: One goal I have for the book is to get it out into communities nationwide, whether that be for schools, through intergenerational programming or through facilities. The book is a platform for big conversations about caring for each other and caring for community. Our path forward has to be focused on intergenerational programming to support cons
