Friendly Visitors

Published 12:00 am Wednesday, June 25, 2008

On Tuesday, Gloria Peach prepared to make her weekly visit to Rosewood Health Care Facility.

She has no relatives staying at the nursing home, but she knows most of the staff and residents there, many of whom call her “Georgia Peach.”

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A retired nurse from Greenview Regional Hospital, Peach is a certified volunteer in the Barren River Long Term Care Ombudsman Program.

Her volunteer duties include visiting nursing home residents, keeping them company while she’s there and resolving with staff on site any problems residents may raise.

“These people have so much wisdom to offer and so many stories to tell,” Peach said.

The ombudsman program consists of volunteers who visit the 33 nursing homes within the 10-county Barren River Area Development District.

Peach is one of five certified volunteers in the program who have been specially trained to resolve residents’ concerns.

The program also claims nine “Friendly Visitors,” who make regular visits to assigned nursing homes to educate residents about their rights and refer problems to trained ombudsmen, and more than 100 special projects volunteers who help with special events during the year.

Program director Ruth Morgan said the volunteers take on many roles with the residents they visit, acting as their sounding board, companion and advocate.

“It’s important that (residents) have someone who will stick up for them and make their problems or concerns known,” Morgan said.

The ombudsman program was implemented in 1972 nationwide and was originally part of President Nixon’s eight-point initiative to improve nursing home care.

The local program is financed partially by federal Title III funds and partially by United Way of Southern Kentucky.

That funding is received by the Barren River Area Agency on Aging, which subcontracts the ombudsman service to Kentucky Legal Aid, which operates the local ombudsman program.

Morgan said about 60 percent of the program’s funding for the past fiscal year came from United Way, which enables the BRADD program to take on an additional staff member and pay for additional training and recruitment services.

The funding will also help pay for a collaborative project with Western Kentucky University to produce brochures with advice from nursing home residents for volunteers who come to visit.

Total revenues for the past year amounted to about $130,000 and expenses came close to that amount, Morgan said.

Earlier this month, local volunteers were honored and a training session was held during the annual volunteer training and recognition ceremony at Mammoth Cave National Park.

All volunteers begin as Friendly Visitors and must go through a three-hour training session, submit two references and undergo a background check.

Volunteers are asked to dedicate four hours each month.

Certified volunteers like Peach must undergo an additional 24 hours of training.

Peach joined the program in 2001, on the recommendation of her tax accountant, another volunteer.

She has accumulated more than 180 hours of service in that time, being awarded this month with a Bronze Presidential Volunteer Service Award.

Peach said she was pushed strongly to consider becoming a certified volunteer by Morgan because of her nursing background.

As a certified volunteer, she hears concerns from residents about the quality of the food, losing personal belongings, making sure the public phone is charged and other issues.

Many residents welcome her company, though she uses the “Georgia Peach” line as an icebreaker for residents wary of her presence.

Peach often brings stuffed animals for new residents or people who don’t get many visitors or who are without room decorations.

When a resident has a birthday, she makes sure to bring them a card.

Peach, who is also interested in pet therapy, once brought a puppy to Rosewood, showing it to a resident named Mildred who had not spoken to staff and who began running her hand along the dog’s fur.

While petting the dog, the resident suddenly said “Ponto” and talked with Peach about a dog she used to have by that name and about her childhood raising chickens on a farm.

“The next time I brought a border collie to Mildred and ran her hand over it and she asked me whether it was a boy or a girl,” Peach said. “I told her it was a girl and Mildred said, ‘Well, you should name it Mildred.’ ”

Morgan said volunteers sometimes encounter “compassion fatigue,” when a resident they are used to visiting dies.

Addressing compassion fatigue has recently become a part of training sessions.

“They have to think about how to process that,” Morgan said of the volunteers. “I hear my volunteers talk about their wonderful residents and how much it brightens their day to visit them.”

Peach has brought her husband, Sam, with her occasionally and has tried to get him to become a Friendly Visitor.

Morgan said the biggest priority for the ombudsman program is to attract more recruits.

The local AARP has helped in that regard through word of mouth and through several members of that organization volunteering.

Warren County’s eight long-term care facilities have as many as 684 residents at one time and volunteers and ombudsmen have seen an estimated 3,494 residents in BRADD-area nursing homes for the fiscal year ending this month.

Morgan said that ideally she would like to see each volunteer be able to meet 50 residents at their assigned homes.

“I suspect we have more people we could see if we could get around to them,” Morgan said. “We’d like to have more recruits and we’d like to have more volunteers trained to become certified ombudsmen.”

When recruiting, Peach sells potential volunteers on the personal gratification she gets from talking with the people she meets and the rapport she has developed with staff at Rosewood.

“It’s our loss if we don’t participate in something like this,” Peach said. “We’re losing that generation fast and there won’t be another generation quite like it.”