This past year, the previously named RI Culture Change Coaltion adopted the new moniker of:
RI Generations and recently launched their web site at:  http://wwww.RIGenerations.com

The Iowa Person Directed Care Coalition is celebrating it's 2nd anniversary. Forty-nine people from 21 organizations attended the Pionner Conference in Minneapolis. What great hosts the Minnesota Coalition was despite the terrible tragedy of the 35W bridge collapsing. In their grief they carried forward with the important message of culture change in American nursing homes. Thank you Minnesota.

I think I say this every year but this year's conference was the best. The pre-conference intensive sessions were directed toward states with coalitions and states that want to develop coalitions. The day was spent in one of 12 breakout sessions. I attended Creating and Sustaining Culture Change Coalitions: Practical Tools and Policy Directions. I learned there is a lot of "culture change" that is happening outside of coalitions, mostly by individual change agents working to transform their own corner of the world.

There are multi-stakeholder coalitions that have come together to address issues that have great relevance to the broader culture change efforts (e.g., direct care worker-focused coalitions), but which are not self-identifying as "culture change coalitions."

We are not building coalitions just for the sake of building coalitions. Deep systems change has always been a driving motivation in the work of the Pioneers and all like-minded organizations around the country.

IPDCC continues to work on helping homes to get going on culture change. We are developing a website with our partners. We continue to educate ourselves. Karen Schoeneman joined our August meeting via teleconference and walked us through Artifacts of Culture Change. A representative from the North Carolina Coalition will attend our September meeting via teleconference to talk about CMP money. Barbara Frank is coming to Iowa to speak at the DEA Elder Rights Conference in October and has graciously agreed to speak with our coalition. Our work to strengten Iowa's goal of incorpotating culture change in all nursing homes is well underway and the support of our partners is amazing.

How to create a Coalition

I had a great time at the conference. It was good to see old friends and to make new ones. Some of my favorites were....

I am hoping to find some answers for my heart today--mine and I'm sure many others.

How is it that a so-called "leadership team" can be so strong and wonderfully connected one day and downright insideously cruel the next?  

How do we, as people who truly care for the elders we are responsible for, handle this kind of behavior when all we want is to grow personally and give the best of ourselves?

Does a rapid turnover rate in caregivers give alarm to anyone else in this field?