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Forgive me if I ramble, but please read this and respond with your thoughts. We here at the Parkinson Foundation of the Heartland have this Parkinson Care Series, which is 8 videos and a seriously substantial 500 page workbook. It is designed to train care professionals to give optimal care to PWP - and to just better help them understand PD, which we all know can be pretty baffling. The professionals recieve CEs for taking the course. At any rate, after a year of incredibly hard work, we now have a little over 200 facilities who are using this product. These facilities train a team as the "go to guys" for all things PD. Teams have an SLP, PT, OT, Dietician, RN, the Administrator, and rounding doc. So far, so good. Our thoughts on this are many-fold. We want all care facilities to view PD has a market, to give them a reason to offer specialized care, and to get them involved with us. We hope that this effort will help the Parkinson community cohese into a more subst! antial group - one that demands specialized and knowledable care professionals, and we hope that individuals and groups will begin working with these communities to fundraise and offer improved services wherever they are. We are in the midst of surveying our Parkinson Proficient Communities to help guage their willingness to be sponsors on things like runs, and to offer support, speech, exercise, balance etc in their facilities and commnities. We are getting really good responses from these guys. Here is Kansas City, our first communties have become both event sponsors - most at $2500, and are doing things like free assessments, free balance classes, free speech classes, and are hosting some of our support groups. It has truly been a win-win situation. These facilities want to know and help PWP! They are smart enough to see us as a market and do what needs to be done to get us engaged. As these surveys come back about what groups are willing to do, we want to begin hooki! ng them up with folks in their communities for services and $! $ or volunteer help. So, I am asking if you guys want to be hooked up with people in your comunities for whatever. RIght now, I have a GREAT group covering Texas, they are wealthy, enagaged and ready to meet the community and offer help and services. For some reason, niether HAPS or DAPS has really repsonded. These guys will be corporate event sponsors and do what needs to be done! Same deal in Arkansas. Our dream is that someday, everyone who has to use services, home health, CCRCs, nursing care, rehabilitiation, hopsice - will be able to say "Are you trained in how to care for me" and if the answer is No, walk away and find someone who is. Truly, this is my life's work. If you are interested in hooking up, go to our website, www.parkinsonheartland.org and look at the Parkinson Proficient Communities. If there is someone near you who would like know and work with, email me and I will get you the proper contact name. We expect to have a good view of this over the next ! couple of weeks, as the facilities respond and let us know what they are willing and/or anxious to do! This is definatly a job for a national organization, but we just didn't see it getting done. So, like the little engine that could, we just got out there. Now, we need the help of PWP across the country to ensure that these facilities that have signed on see the value, and to be sure that every damn facility in the country will see PWP as a force to be reckoned with. We can use your help to get r done. Let me know your thoughts, negative, positive, if you want to help with this project, if you think its the worst idea ever. Thanks so much, Meg Offlist, you can reach me at [log in to unmask], or 913-341-8828. I'd also love to see a discussion of this on the list. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn