Under what I call the Money Model of disability, the disabled human being is a commodity around which social policies are created or rejected based on their market value.
"The corporate "solution" to disablement-institutionalization in a nursing home-evolved from the cold realization that disabled people could be commodified; we could be made to serve profit because federal financing (Medicaid funds 60 percent, Medicare 15 percent, private insurance 25 percent) guarantees an endless source of entrepreneurial revenue. Disabled people are "worth" more to the Gross Domestic Product when we occupy a "bed" instead of a home. When we individually generate $30,000 - $82,000 in annual revenues the electronic brokers on Wall Street count us as assets and we contribute to companies' net worth. The "final solution"-corporate dominion over disability policy-measures a person's "worth" by its dollar value to the economy." (from Beyond Ramps)
So it is no surprise that nursing homes are understaffed, run poorly and downright dangerous places to "live." Abuse in RAMPANT in them. This is one reason why there has been a huge movement amongst disability activists to gain control over their lives by demanding personal assistance services(PAS) in the home. And we know that abuse of disabled persons is also rampant everywhere in society. Disabled people are abused 2-3 times more than the nondisabled population. In-home PAS will give us the power to both hire our attendants and fire abusive ones. If we are successful in making PAS mandatory national policy, it is my view that the additional challenge will be to prevent domination of PAS services by corporations or by the medical profession and to obtain a level of funding that will both pay a living wage and provide benefits.
Marta Russell
C. Petersen wrote:
>
> > I worked for four years in a nursing home, and must say the attrition rate
> > due to injury increased dramatically over that time. One reason was staff
> > reduction, mostly along the lines of "Professionalism"; i.e., R.N.'s becoming
> > supervisors and managers, L.P.N.'s becoming shift overseers and pill pushers,
> > while fewer Assistants were apportioned to greater numbers of highly
> > debilitated patients. The average for the firm in which I worked was 1
> > assistant per 8 patients in 1992, but 1 to 12 in 1995. We were considered
> > good, too.
>
> oh, my boyfriend got certified as a nursing assistant (a very short course
> - they don't train them very well) and he was working in a nursing home
> last summer. They were perpetually short staffed which resulted in their
> having to run around frantically trying to get everything done. Supposedly
> this was one of the best homes too. The residents would start to cringe
> away whenever they entered the room as though they were scared of them.
> They were forced to take shortcuts like lifting patients by themselves w/o
> using a safety belt in order to get everything done. He ended up quitting
> fairly soon, so it seems like the field will end up with a lot of people
> who were unable to get jobs in any other area.