...which is pretty impressive, to me, when AFAIK many of those low-level workers down in the trenches often make little more than minimum wage.
Do you think the shift from Kulongoski back to Kitzhaber is going to make any difference in your case? Or are the governors at such a high level they really don't influence this sort of issue one way or the other?
That investigator who didn't think your wife was fit does sound like the kind of government worker that shouldn't be one :-( ; I'm sorry you and your wife had to go through that. (I was briefly guardian for my stepfather, and there the investigation was all of filling out some form and a 5-minute phone interview -- I found it more a formality than anything else.)
Or the fun of finding newer parts every ouple years to keep building an old design that started with lots of select in test, or componets sorted at incoming inspection.
--
For the last time: I am not a mad scientist, I'm just a very ticked off
scientist!!!
On Thu, 30 Dec 2010 09:46:33 -0800, "Joel Koltner" wrote:
For the caregivers, it's true they make on the order of $10/hr. And there is NO FUTURE for them -- no career providing such services. So you get quite a spectrum of motivations, most of the sane ones being that the job is very temporary until they can find something better. Turnover in Oregon is, depending upon who you talk to and when, on the order of between 150% to 300% per year. This is a serious health and safety issue that can only be addressed by retaining qualified staff and by providing some kind of career path. That's even less likely today, than yesterday.
Many of the really good ones gravitate towards gov't staff position work. Good benefits, retirement (PERS), and steady. You can at least live a life. But those positions often don't have direct care responsibilities (I don't know of any that do direct care, in fact), instead acting to guide agencies which pay those caregivers almost nothing, manage paperwork, and do the occasional annual review to force certain double-checks that basic minimums are met. One of those two I mentioned earlier is in this position and she has her own medically fragile child (bed-ridden, grand mal seizures, and multiple disabilities) and I don't even need to say anything at all to her. We just look for a few seconds at each other and all the communication has already taken place. She knows exactly what we go through without a word said. And she has made a huge difference in our lives.
Some good ones even gravitate into mid-level staff positions where the pay is decent and the actually do good work from there. My first contact with one of these was because of a crisis taking place and she runs the entire county level program here. She made a huge difference during that time. I still have (and I will keep forever) a recorded message from her during the most difficult moments we were going through. Just to remind me from time to time. The situation could have become something quite terrible and it didn't, in significant part because of her personal involvement and care.
But my experience with those who gravitate to the very top staff positions, those who get paid more than the Governor himself (or herself when that happens), is much more spotty and their concerns (even after 20-30 years of much more direct service that is respectable) have transitioned because of all the politics that surrounds every minute of every day. This is where, especially, there is fear of losing such a well paid job over some news article, for example. Or where there is a federal mandate (such as PL 99-457, passed I think in 1989 and required by the states to be implemented in 1991) that requires more state spending (matched by fed funds in some formula) that the legislature is no way going to spend. When I was traveling to attend a 15-member governor appointed committee for PL 99-457 here in Oregon, the best estimates by the DOE and DHS were the costs would be at least $100M per biennium. No way. They simply asked, "What's the penalty if we don't do it?" Well, under USC 10-20 (PL 94-142) the penalties were a loss of $7M per biennium for failure to comply. That was a no-brainer for the legislature. Join Mississippi as the only state in the union saying they won't do it. Easy. So negotiations happened. One of the ideas was to violate the federal law by not looking at children until they reached 6 months of age, on the theory that most children identified as needing services before that are identified at birth and have serious problems.... a great many don't survive to reach 6 months of age. So doing a cutoff at 6 months means a lot of money doesn't get taken to the grave. Kind of ruthless, but one must draw lines. However, they weren't going to enter into a public discussion about it and allow the people of the state to decide what they were willing to stomach. More, they decided that they could only pass a maximum of $30M per biennium (negotiated figure after months of backroom meetings), so the legislature simply said to DOE and DHS, "You need to come up with a plan that says $30M per biennium. We don't care how you do it, that's the number that you have to present. Or it won't pass." So the agency staff (Karen was head of DOE at the time) people didn't even bother to find out what services were needed around the 36 counties in the state or bother to make any predictions about future needs. They simply cobbled up a dummy document.
It passed. But then, there wasn't anywhere near enough money by anyone's better guesses and the pieces were left to be picked up by those at the bottom who have to provide those direct services, 1 on 1, day in and day out, and somehow survive and get by.
It is a god-awful mess. It's no wonder what I see operating in these homes and the rates of death.
Also, the State leaves death reports in the hands of the agencies. They don't get copies, nor do they require copies to be kept. They leave it to the agency policies what happens. As a result, analyzing the real situations is very difficult. There are only three pieces (datums) that are sent to the state and that only started happening recently (last decade.)
I will be meeting with Kitzhaber this coming year. So I will know better, then. This is "his baby" in a sense. So maybe so. But there is so much going on -- the state is "driving over a cliff" according to Kulongoski's public statement about four months ago -- that I suspect there are some very big fish to fry. But I'll see.
Bottom line is that our society (US) is a relatively bad place to be in, if you are developmentally disabled. (Probably that includes many other disabilities, too. But I know this part of it better.) Over and over again I've been told to move to Europe (and considered it) where in a fair number of gov'ts there the services are reasonable and median life spans much longer as a result. The Swiss have an incredibly good design which keeps what services they do provide in public view (for example, by providing disability services in the center area of a regular school that makes it visible to parents and voters who otherwise would have no idea what takes place) and this constant vigilence produces results. In the US, it is "out of sight, out of mind." And if people die, no one knows or cares and many times it is in everyone's interests to hide anything that might be untoward. It rarely makes a news item at all.
I spoke with the associate director of a large operation in the state who told me that probably 10% of those they care for see any family member, at all. And then, once a year. Of those who get a regular visit (more often than once a year is 'regular') it is about 1% of those they serve. So even the families are out of the picture, by and large.
So why should the public care if the families don't? It's a question.
The odd thing is that it is a clear fact to me that she is much better able to keep track of Athena. She is constantly aware and her mind is always scanning and thinking about, and anticipating, some possible problem. She asks me to remedy these when appropriate. But she is the one whose mind seems to be more fully engaged across the wide spectrum of risks and I've no doubt in my own mind which of us Athena needs more to be around her. So it was a complete shock to us that this lady felt Becky to be sufficiently less able that she couldn't even add her endorsement. The only thing I can chalk it up to is that Becky makes light of situations, tells jokes, puts things in funny ways. It is part of how we cope, I suppose. But it works and makes having to face the fact that upon any one day we might find our daughter laying in a pool of blood, dead, because we just happened to be distracted for a second and weren't there to catch her during a seizure at the wrong place and time. Without it, with only some serious grinding view of life, I'm not sure how we'd survive and remain sane. But some people are really not very humorous and take humor about like making a bomb joke would be taken when at some airport.
I find it amusing when a dopey fucktard takes a known acronym and twists it so blatantly that it shows his utter stupidity before even a word is spoken. You are one such dopey fucktard.
Spray shot through a screen is STENCIL printing., whether the screen has a mesh or not. The media is sprayed.
SILK SCREEN printing is where the print media is forced through a masked screen directly onto the target surface. The media is wiped.
The riot here is that you actually think you had a proper reason to be laughing, much less doing so while rolling on the floor.
I think your mental age has been progressing backward for about the last nine years now. You lose three years as each new year passes.
A couple more years and you will be posting mere babbling... wait! Too late!
That must be why we have hundreds of spares on hand (cycling through the system) for our products. And yes, they are main mission flight line equipment.
Where the f*ck do you think the term "Repair Depot" comes from?
Talk about always wrong. You've been spouting off while looking in a mirror for years now! That dumb crack ranks up in your top ten most stupid claims LIST.
The only thing in this thread that is a "onesie" is the count of neurons you have between your ears that actually fire correctly.
Now, go look in the mirror, right as you come back and claim that I am wrong again.
Aircraft carriers purchase spares in TENsies. And we are talking about quarter mil pieces too.
I can't say how they were printed in the past but I think this is one way they are printed now, for some that is. 48 needles on a machine, making their mark! No ink here..
Maybe this will help
formatting link
Jamie
Whenever I fill out an application, in the part that says "In an emergency, notify," I put "DOCTOR".
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