Volunteers Help Monitor Nursing Homes

Mary White chats easily with the 20 or so elderly women gathered in a recreation room at Maywood Acres Healthcare Center, but her trained eyes are always alert for signs of trouble.

Are the women’s clothes clean? Is their hair groomed? Any unexplained bruises or injuries? Does someone seem upset about something?

“If there is anything wrong, they will tell me because I’m their friend,” said White, who was been making weekly visits to the Oxnard nursing home for five years. “They might not want to complain to an administrator.”

White is one of 28 volunteers with Long Term Care Services of Ventura County, a watchdog group empowered by the state to monitor and investigate complaints of abuse in nursing and senior residential care homes.

Ombudsmen such as White meet with nursing home administrators when a complaint is made and try to resolve the problem, said Susan Miller, coordinator for the program. Most complaints are minor. Food may be cold or medicines delivered late.

Program volunteers also make sure that the seniors’ privacy rights are adhered to and that they are properly groomed. On rare occasions, the problems are more serious, such as malnutrition or untreated medical conditions.

Most often, though, White says she spends most of her time simply talking to residents for a few minutes each. White visits four residential care homes once a month, she said.

“Every one of the seniors I’ve met are special in their own way,” she said. “They have become my friends.”

Ventura County has about 90 facilities that serve the elderly, Miller said, and the need for volunteer ombudsmen is growing as the county’s senior population swells.

Volunteers are supervised during 36 hours of training and then are assigned to make regular visits to the care facilities, Miller said.

Besides receiving and investigating complaints, Long Term Care Services offers counseling to help families deal with the emotional issue of putting a family member in a home and to explain what they can expect, she said.

White, who declined to give her age, said she decided to become an ombudsmen in 1989 after selling houses for a living for many years. Betty Merrifield, 73, has been an ombudsman for more than a decade.

Both said they gain tremendous satisfaction from aiding the elderly.

“To me, it’s a terribly important program,” said Merrifield, who is a retired social service worker. “A lot of these people don’t have anyone who cares.”