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Roots of our Current Campaigns: Long-term Care Concerns Campaign #1: Health Care for Everyone Campaign #2: Launching the Mid Maine Time Bank Building a Capital Region Chapter

Roots of our Current Campaigns: Long-term Care Concerns

Since the Spring of 2006, KVO has made it a top priority to address the crisis of long-term care and personal assistance for elderly and disabled community members in the Kennebec Valley. This priority emerged after hearing stories from consumers, family members, providers, and frontline direct care workers about the barriers they faced providing and obtaining high-quality care.

In the Fall of 2007, KVO organized a campaign of round-table discussions that brought together more than 100 people affected by long-term care to share their stories and prioritize concerns. From more than 30 top concerns that emerged in a dozen round tables, there were clearlytwo overarching priorities:

• Improve care by improving the pay, benefits and recognition of direct care workers;

• Support consumers and caregivers (paid and unpaid) through education, awareness, and cooperative initiatives.

To address the first priority, KVO joined the statewide Direct Care Worker Coalition (DCWC) in seeking concrete ways to improve the pay and benefits for the direct care workers who play such a critical, hands-on role in the care of our elderly and disabled. With the DCWC, KVO leaders worked hard for the passage of L.D. 1687, "An Act to Increase Health Insurance Coverage for Front-line Direct Care Workers Providing Long-term Care." When the measure failed to pass in the last legislative session, KVO leaders decided that the best chance to provide health care for health care workers was to fight for HEALTH CARE FOR EVERYONE.

To address the second priority, KVO leaders discovered a model right in our own state: Time Banking. Read below to learn more about how KVO is working to launch the Mid Maine Time Bank, based on a national model and with the assistance of the Portland Time Bank.

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Campaign #1: Health Care for All

After the defeat of a modest plan to get a small number of direct care workers covered by health insurance, it is clear that deeper changes are needed in our health care system. The best chance of getting health care for these vulnerable workers is to work toward a system that can ensure health care for everyone.

Last year, KVO went through a process of broad outreach, story gathering and sharing and values clarification to come up with a Declaration of Health Care Principles. This set of top priorities and principles will guide our campaign to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to get quality, affordable health care. Click here to read more about the process of setting our guiding principles and some key events in the campaign to date.

Our Health Care for All campaign going into 2009 focuses on two approaches.

First, we remain committed to improving access to health care specifically for health care workers. KVO leaders took part in a Bureau of Insurance task force over the summer to look into options for providing health insurance to the many uninsured and under-insured direct care workers in long-term care. In January, Maine Superintendent of Insurance Mila Kofman released her report, which includes action recommendations very similar to the demands KVO and our allies on the Direct Care Worker Coalition have been making for the last year.

Click here to read the report.

We will be looking to use the report's recommendations as a basic framework for renewed efforts to win health care for health care workers.

Our second approach will be to call for important protections that will allow consumers to know what they are getting when it comes to their health insurance and their health care. These protections are critical to assure quality and cost containment in the system, which are key foundations upon which increased access will be built. We are working as part of the Maine Voices for Coverage Coalition to support measures that increase transparency in the health care system. Click here to read more about a Jan 15th press conference to launch this campaign.

KVO will be organizing health care consumer empowerment workshops this spring in our member groups that will provide education on our current health care system and our proposals for reform, and information that will help consumers know and assert the rights that they do have currently. Stay tuned for more details...

Want to be a part of it? Check out the calendar page to find out about upcoming events, or contact KVO Lead Organizer Dan Koehler to find out how you can help the KVO Health Care Team.

Campaign #2: Launching the Mid Maine Time Bank

In our central Maine communities, long term care is not just about professional health care. In our round tables, we heard a strong desire to strengthen the local support networks that allow families and communities to “care for their own”, and for frail elderly to remain in their homes for as long as possible.

Time Banking is a wonderful model for this vision. Time Banking is about individuals using their skills to enhance their lives, save cash dollars and build relationships. The concept is simple: for every hour of service you provide to a Time Bank member you earn one Time Dollar which you can spend on services provided by other Time Bank members.

For example, a homebound senior can earn time dollars by teaching knitting lessons, which she can then spend getting a volunteer to drive her on errands. The errand driver can spend his time dollars to get another time bank member to help paint his house, and so on. In some existing Maine time banks, hundreds of members exchange thousands of hours of service with each other every month.

The Mid Maine Time Bank was launched with a successful kick-off event on June 8th in Fairfield. MMTB already has 60 members and a directory of over 50 different skills and services on offer.

Want to learn more about Time Banking? Visit the Mid Maine Time Bank website, or call MMTB Coordinator Stacey Jacobsohn at (207) 872-2909.

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Building the Capital Region Chapter

KVO is working with pastors and clergy leaders in the Augusta area to build a capital region chapter. These leaders are building relationships across potential divides, learning about KVO's model of faith- and values-based organizing, and discussing the possibility for forming a new chapter that would conduct its own listening campaign and initiate a local action campaign around an issue of particular importance to families in the Augusta area.

Due to the severity of the housing and heating crisis, however, the leaders have jumped into emergency action with a series of meetings of clergy, civic and community leaders to shape emergency responses to avert disaster this winter.

Click here to read a statement from Pastor Kevin Kidd and Rev. Elizabeth Miller on the purpose of the initial 11/13 meeting.

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