Elder Care for Our Region

Thanks for being here.

When we’ve been working on this subject for the last few years, we’ve focused mainly on the idea of a residential place for people to live once they can’t live at home anymore – an assisted living home or a nursing home – and we’ve had a much smaller ongoing conversation about finding ways to help people stay in their homes. We’re changing that strategy to one that puts the two at the same level of importance.

What is it we’re trying to do and how do we do it?

Let’s expand our idea of what it means to live satisfying, rich lives for as we age in our region and make that a reality. Let’s build this always keeping in mind what we’d want for our parents, for ourselves as we age, for our kids when they are old. Let’s go about this in terms of what we need and want instead of through the lens of how elder care is set up to work now. 

What does that mean? To build a system that-

-Keeps people at home as long as they want to be. 

-Lets people stay in the region their whole lives.

-Enables adult children to bring their parents to Alpine. 

-What else should we list here?

What do we already have?

-We already have all the services of the Sunshine House.

-Potential Staff. We have excellent pipeline because of the Sul Ross nursing and high school CNA programs.

-We already have therapies in people’s homes with Agave Home Health and Agave Therapy.

-We already have local short-term rehab care through the hospital’s swing bed program.

-We already have TRAX transportation.

-We already have some hospice service in the area.

-What else should we list here?

What do we need?

-Even more robust transportation from all of our towns to specialist appointments in Odessa/Midland, El Paso, San Angelo, and others as needed.

-An affordable home-improvement program to build ramps, put in grab bars, widen doorways, etc.

-Nursing in people’s homes on a long-term basis.

-Personal care in people’s homes.

-A place for people to live when they are infirm and need more help (assisted living).

-A wonderful place for people to go when they are in their last days.

-A one-stop contact for help understanding all these things.

-What else should we list here?

Who is involved in effort this so far? Who wants to join?

Alpine Community Projects, the Sunshine House, Big Bend Regional Hospital District, Area Agency on Aging, Katherine Parker, Catherine Eaves, Sef Gomez, Minerva Gonzales, Curtis Evans, Elidia Polanco, Edie Simmons, Adrian Billings, Saul Garza, Stephanie Carson-Henderson, Alex Schmidt, Mike Wallens, Sara Cash, Lana Covington, let us know if your name should be here.