Leading Age - January/February 2011 - 38

wisdom
Organizing Effective Resident Advocacy
Earl Thayer is a resident of Oakwood Village in Madison, Wis.. Before moving to Oakwood Village, he served as executive director of Wisconsin’s medical association and on Oakwood Village’s board. He brought his commitment to public health and his passion for advocacy with him to Oakwood, where he has helped build a model resident advocacy program that helped Wisconsin CCRCs defeat legislation that would have repealed their property tax exemption. Thayer reflects on how others can engage residents and board members in advocacy, and the value of building a grassroots advocacy program. b y Ea r l T h a y er

dential elderly care? Why are CCRCs different? What makes a not-for-profit different from a for-profit? Staff and resident leadership has to know this better than everybody else. You have to become so conversant that you become a resource to legislators, mayors and others who run the municipalities so they have to turn to you as a counselor. You’re honest, you’re fully transparent in terms of the problems, but you also are able to give information they simply can’t get anywhere else Know who knows whom. We’ve developed an official resident advocacy committee as part of the resident association. You would hardly believe the number of contacts among the residents themselves and relative to the people who make the decisions on the policy level. We have about 100 people who know somebody personally, who may have been the backyard neighbor whose daughter or son is connected with somebody. Then, we have another 200 people ready to fire off a letter, a Facebook or other social media message, or an e-mail, or make phone calls because they feel an obligation as good citizens to do that and help Oakwood and its work. Patience. Nothing ever goes quite as you’d hoped. The CCRC Committee legislation languished before it flared up and dragged on until we were able to push the governor to veto it. That took time. And you can never be sure how it will turn out. Staff has to be ready to assist. When you have an effort that’s resident-organized, resident-implemented, residentdirected and advised, you have to do it in close cooperation not only with the state and national legislative offices, but with our own staff. We had a group of residents responding to the point that legislators finally called us and said, “Hey, stop it,” you know, “I can’t answer all these letters. I’m with you. Just don’t push me anymore, okay? I’ve too many other things to do.” When you get to that point, you know you’re being effective. It takes full-bore cooperation between staff and residents to implement a lot of the mechanics to make this work. Our staff was magnificent in making sure the results of legislative activities were communicated. In the final analysis, you put all of that together—the knowledge and the trust and the inspiration and the service—and you’ve got advocacy by residents not only on behalf of their own interest, but also your organization’s. They put the CCRC on public display with important decision makers, and it’s an image-building operation at its best.

n Latin, the word advocate is advocatus—to counsel, to speak for, about something on behalf of others. All board members ought to consider themselves advocates or they shouldn’t even be on the board. They have to feel, to some degree, inspired by the problems and concerns and issues that confront the aging population. Every board member must be able to see that, and thus contribute as they do. When it comes to advocacy, it’s one thing, and a relatively easy thing, to turn out 100 seniors or so to an assembly or a senate hearing room on issues affecting the elderly. That’s kind of a show, it’s an attention getter, it’s a media event, and it’s important. But, it’s quite another matter and much more effective to develop the ability to get 200, 300 letters, e-mails, phone calls to a few legislators on 24- or 48-hours notice. That’s what Oakwood residents have been able to do. Not just once, but repeatedly. All the while that they are doing that, there are quiet contacts with key legislators by a select group of people who are personal friends or advisors of legislators or persons who know legislators on a first-name, trusted, confidant basis. And that’s where, in my estimation, the rubber hits the road of advocacy. How we get to that point is what’s so important. How does that happen? It doesn’t just occur. It’s got to be created, developed, and that’s what we’ve been able to do here with huge support of the residents. In my opinion, there are four key elements that go into successful advocacy:

Know the facts. Know and understand how homes and services for the aging work. How do they function? How are they operated financially? What does the public want? What does it think it needs? Why do you choose a CCRC over simple resi38
LeadingAge magazine | January/February 2011

Leading Age - January/February 2011

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