At the Top of Our Game in Sarasota County
An article in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune talked about the graying of our global population as our planet hits the 7 billion population mark. Ted Fishman, author of “Shock of Gray”, was quoted,
“Longer life is what human beings have wanted ever since we started talking to spirits and mixing herbs in bowls. And we worked at the top of our intelligence to get to this point of our life. It took almost the sum total of human history to get it. And now we have to work at the top of our intelligence to solve the social challenges that come with longer life and aging societies.”
I like Ted Fishman’s thinking. It’s definitely “glass half-full” thinking, recognizing that we have the capacity globally to meet this demographic challenge and ensure quality of life for older adults.
Naturally, part of the discussion revolves around, “how might we do this without creating an impossible burden on the younger generations?” I recently discovered the “Global Aging Preparedness Index” , which assesses which countries are most prepared to create a balance between benefits/quality of life for older adults and fiscal burden on society. While that report analyzes options with potential outcomes for various government policies, it concludes that we all play a part. That is, businesses, individuals and families along with government at all levels, have a role and the responsibility, to create pieces of the solution.
It is fortunate to be in Sarasota County. The newly formed Institute for the Ages is putting together projects to develop and test products, services and policies that will contribute to the quality of life for older adults. Sarasota residents will contribute their thinking and lived-experience as part of a beta site for numerous projects. This is about out-of-the-box thinking and Sarasota County is squarely in the innovation arena with the potential to transform the lives of older adults here and elsewhere.
Another resource with much potential is the Aging with Dignity and Independence initiative. Led by a partnership of SCOPE, The Patterson Foundation and USF Sarasota-Manatee, this qualitative research yielded six big themes that impact the experience of aging with dignity and independence. The recent report provides questions for reflection, solutions to consider, and a broad listing of resources and best practices that have helped other communities and could catalyze ours.
Businesses, individuals, nonprofits, institutions, government - each sector has the role and the responsibility to be part of the solution. What solutions do you want to help create?
I like to remember Albert Einstein’s words, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”
Read All About It: Central-Cocoanut Neighbors Join Together in Fierce Devotion to their Neighborhood
In recent weeks, there have been many media reports about the local response to the mural painted in the Central-Cocoanut neighborhood of Newtown, on the corner of 10th Street and Central Avenue. As a community engagement organization, SCOPE has been anticipating headlines about the community-building brilliance of the neighborhood residents, as that’s what most impresses us about what’s been going on. We have yet to see such headlines in the dominant media, however, so we are offering one of our own: “Central-Cocoanut Neighbors Join Together in Fierce Devotion to their Neighborhood.”
Here’s what we have witnessed over the past several weeks:
- A mural went up in the neighborhood, to the surprise of residents.
- Residents connected with each other to begin finding out what different people in the neighborhood thought and felt about it.
- Residents tuned in to concerns being expressed by fellow neighbors - by kids, teens and adults; by long-time and newer residents; by people of different ethnicities; by artists and “non-artists;” by people of different political persuasions.
- Residents called a meeting for neighbors to share their perspectives with one another, and to consider how to respond.
- Residents followed the lead of neighborkids, who hosted the meeting itself. In this way, they oriented around the natural community-building tendencies of children, and ensured that neighbors were connecting across generations in response to the circumstances.
- Residents stood up to people from outside the neighborhood who came to their neighborhood meeting and acted disrespectfully toward neighbors.
- Residents created a plan for gathering perspectives from hundreds of fellow neighbors in Central-Cocoanut, which neighbor-kids and -adults together are now carrying out.
- Residents turned to one another for mutual respect and support in the face of disengagement from the broader community.
This stuff matters. It’s what resident-led community-building is all about. And SCOPE isn’t the only group of community engagement folks who think this is important. See what the Annie E. Casey Foundation has to say in their work on social networks. And what the Aspen Institute Roundtable for Community Change has to say in their series on Voices from the Field. And what the White House Office of Public Engagement has to say on the White House Blog.
Regardless of what you think about the mural itself, we hope you are paying attention to what’s going on in our local community with regard to community-building these days. There’s a tremendous amount for all of us to learn from the example of our Central-Cocoanut neighbors.
Community Wisdom
With the community research complete, the next step for the Aging with Dignity and Independence initiative is to share the fruits of the research, the six big themes that surfaced after examining the local lived-experiences of more than 500 older adults in Sarasota County.
The six themes that impact the experience of aging with dignity and independence are distinctly separate, and at the same time, bump up to one another and overlap at times. They are: 
v Meaningful Involvement
v Respect & Social Inclusion
v Communication & Information
v Health & Well-being
v Aging in Place
v Transportation & Mobility
As this information is shared with the community, I could see that individuals, businesses and organizations might reflect on what was learned and think about what it means for their own circles of connection and influence. How best to shift one’s own behaviors, procedures, programs or policies? These are issues that demand our attention and they present opportunities for action. I like to think of it as community wisdom inspiring community action.
Over the next few weeks I will share a glimpse of each theme and ways the community may choose to make a difference. Community presentations will be made throughout January, as a way to spark the thinking in our community.
As part of the research, older adults were asked what both dignity and independence meant to them in the context of growing older. Dignity was described as self reliance and self direction, sense of pride and self-worth, respect and acceptance by self and others, and making decisions through the end of life.
“Dignity means being treated as the competent, intelligent person I am. It means having someone ask what would I like rather than tell me what I need. It means having choices and having a voice.”
Independence was described as self reliance for transportation and maintaining one’s own house, performing personal care activities, financial independence, making one’s own decisions for living arrangements, activities and social life, and doing what matters to them.
“Independence means the ability to take part in any and all aspects of one’s community.”
I asked my daughter – a senior in high school, to describe what dignity and independence meant to her.
She defined dignity as self respect and self worth and acting honestly. She said “I am respected more when I act honestly.” Independence was about knowing she could do it alone if she wanted to, but not necessarily having to do it alone. And she closed with, “Mom, I never think about these concepts.”
So my teenager doesn’t think about these things, and probably with good reason. They are just part of her experience on most days. And her words weren’t much different from those of the older adults. Dignity and independence are important as part of our lived experience, no matter what our age.
How do we make sure that happens for all older adults in our community?
Read the Aging with Dignity & Independence summary report, Actionable Themes: Issues and Opportunities
Dignified Aging
In case you were too busy chasing “Black Friday” sales to read the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, I’ve linked here to the Nov 25th editorial penned by Kathy Silverberg, “Dignified Aging Requires Mutual Respect and Acceptance.” The editorial focused on the results from the community research of the Aging with Dignity and Independence initiative. What are the core issues integral to the experience of dignity and independence as one ages? The broad issues are respect and social inclusion, meaningful involvement, communication and information, aging in place, health and well-being, and transportation and mobility. SCOPE will host numerous presentations in January to share the results of the research with the broader community. We hope this editorial is just the beginning of community comment and reflection - the first steps to developing action leading to community change. Read more about this community research.
A Caregiver’s Path
On November 4th I attended the 11th Annual Caregiving Forum at Sarasota Memorial Hospital, entitled “The Year of the Family Caregiver.” I was there as an impending family caregiver. Unclear as to when exactly I would become immersed in the role, but very aware that I was not prepared for it. My parents are aging in place in their home about 200 miles from Sarasota. I am the closest adult child, geographically, by a long shot. While the situation is okay for now, there have been a few bumps in the road this year and helping from afar has amounted to hand-wringing, hand-holding (over the phone) and doing frantic internet searches to become more knowledgeable. Part of my concern is the impact on my mom, who is likely to be the caregiver to my dad. It’s the way health issues are playing out for them. (I don’t think either of them would want me to declare anybody as a “caregiver” right now so I will resist.)
Basic facts from the Forum:
The National Family Caregiver Association points out that more than 65 million people in the US provide care for a chronically ill, disabled or aged family member or friend during any given year. That’s 29% of our population averaging 20 hours each week providing care. Caregivers often suffer both mental and physical decline related to the stress of their role. 17% of caregivers feel their health in general has gotten worse as a result of their caregiving responsibilities. How can my parents adjust to changing health realities, get the support they need to stay in their own home and minimize their stress?
This past year I worked with Kathy Black at USF Sarasota-Manatee and The Patterson Foundation on the topic of Aging with Dignity and Independence. The goal was to better understand the lived-experience of older adults as they age in our community. Caregiver health and well-being surfaced as an important issue. Older adults shared strategies for being resilient in the face of declining health and caregiver stress. The results of this community-based research are coming out soon.
The Annual Caregiver Forum was a good place for me to get oriented. Three panels gave information covering managing caregiver stress, getting the most out of your relationship with your doctor, local caregiver resources and financial and legal considerations. I understand part of the forum was taped and when it’s available, I will provide the links here.
The big takeaways for me:
- The caregiver needs to manage their physiological response to stress. How does one enhance the mind-body connection in order to minimize the impact of stress? There were 3 specific suggestions – breath awareness, self inquiry (we are what we think), and affirmations - all directed at calming the mind and therefore calming the body.
- Get the most out of your relationship with your doctor. A patient with a memory disorder should probably not be the only person conversing with the doctor. Bring a list of questions with you.
- Understand the medication. Know if the drug modifies the disease (e.g. insulin or blood pressure medicine) or targets symptoms and makes you feel better. Not all meds are good for older adults. There is a list called the Beers List of drugs generally considered unsuitable for older people. A quick Internet check produced articles on this and other tools for looking for inappropriate meds. It’s worth asking your doctor about.
- There are specific resources in Sarasota County that are helpful to caregivers – information, support groups and caregiver classes can be found at the Caregiver Resource Center , the Caregiver Network Srq and through the Alzheimer’s Association . SMH Memory Disorder Clinic provides diagnosis and assessment and helps develop a plan for services.
- Check out your legal documents, specifically the Durable Power of Attorney and the healthcare directives. Laws have changed recently regarding Power of Attorney. If your healthcare directive is only a page long, it is probably insufficient.
This is a good start for me. Not quite a road map, more like compass points to get my bearing along the journey. And definitely information to help me have a thoughtful and respectful conversation with my parents.
A new initiative that is a partnership between The Patterson Foundation and Share the Care, Caregiver Connect, will bring an online platform to our community in the near future. This initiative evolved from their exploration of dementia. I see Caregiver Connect as a mega-resource making it easier for us to gather information and make choices. More compass points.
Data Byte: Many Eyes
How long is everybody’s morning commute here in Sarasota County? How safe are the airlines flying out of our local Sarasota-Bradenton Airport? There are a lot of great places to grab a cup of coffee here in Sarasota County. How much coffee are we consuming? Want to see for yourself? IBM has developed an online resource called “Many Eyes” (which you can access here) as a public “experiment” in data visualization. In “three easy steps,” anyone of us can create interactive visualizations from previously uploaded data or any dataset we wish to contribute, and then share what we discover by posting it for all to see. There are more than just maps and graphs that can be created from data — over 100,000 visualizations have been posted on Many Eyes. This kind of public participation in data helps us illuminate patterns in our community previously not seen before. Tableau Public is also a great data visualization tool with similar features. Check them both out!
Attending to Equity Here in Sarasota County
This week at SCOPE we are participating in the e-conference of the Community Indicators Consortium. Today we listened to Angela Glover Blackwell, founder and CEO of PolicyLink, talk about “Equity, Measurement and the Future.” She defined her organization as a “community-building intermediary,” which is one way to describe SCOPE as well.
She talked about that point when her organization “first understood the power of data, and what that could do to help local communities, local activists, and residents to have a different conversation about their future, their issues, and the solutions.” We resonate with this perspective on data and its role in community conversation.
Ms. Blackwell defined equity as “fair and just inclusion into a society in which all can participate and prosper and reach their full potential.” She went on to say:
- Equity “has become absolutely essential,”
- Equity “continues to be the thing we need to invest in if democracy is to thrive,” and
- The economic reality is that equity “has become the superior growth model for the nation - if we don’t invest equitably, America will not thrive.”
With regard to equity indicators, she urged us all to think not simply in terms of disparities, but in terms of “aspiration indicators,” asking “What do we aspire to? And how can we measure the distance between our goals and where we are now?”
Here at SCOPE, we enthusiastically agree with Ms. Blackwell about the critical importance of equity. Who else in our community resonates with this perspective?
As the Community Data Collaborative here in Sarasota County evolves, who among us has data to share to bring issues of equity into focus at the local scale? What else do we need to be gathering, data-wise — as citizens, neighborhoods, businesses/organizations, and governments — in order to notice how all of us who live here are participating, prospering and reaching our full potential?
What is SCOPE’s Resident Community Changemakers Fellowship?
On Tuesday, SCOPE will host an information session regarding the Resident Community Changemakers fellowship, which will be starting up in January 2012. This is a nine-month fellowship for individuals who are living in Sarasota County and are interested in devoting themselves to resident-initiated, resident-led community change efforts beginning in their own neighborhood. SCOPE will provide fellows with ongoing reflective consultation, tools and resources, networking opportunities, stipends, and training/technical assistance as needed to support community development at the neighborhood scale.
SCOPE has a distinct Theory of Community Change that orients to residents as primary community builders. Why? In many ways, residents who are neighbors trump professionals (no matter how competent) when it comes to neighborhood-scale community building. Residents have personal investment in the success of their own place. They have a more intimate perspective on everyday life, and so are able to more exquisitely detect changes in the neighborhood, and meaningful changes at that. Power differentials are less likely among neighbors than between neighbors and and institutions. And community building by neighbors tends to be more natural than professionally-led community-building.
What then is SCOPE’s role in relation to community-building? As an institution (even as a community engagement institution), we see our role as one of “second investor.” We work to spot aspiring resident community builders throughout the county. Then we orient them to SCOPE’s Theory of Community Change - not to educate or indoctrinate, but rather to determine whether this Theory of Community Change resonates. SCOPE then teams up with residents who are aspiring community changemakers with compatible philosophies and, by following the lead of residents, partners in community change efforts that emanate from the neighborhood scale.
The primary resource that SCOPE offers to fellows is reflective consultation, in order to support the reflective capacities of resident community changemakers. Reflective consultation refers to individual and group sessions in which the fellow describes their latest community-building efforts and what has been going on in their neighborhood and community, and the SCOPE consultant actively listens and asks questions to clarify what has been learned through the experience, and how this can inform future neighbor-led efforts. When a person is able to reflect real-time on the decisions they are making and the actions they are taking, in personal, family, neighborhood, and broader community context, they are able to be more effective as change agents. When indicated, SCOPE is able and willing to provide education, training, and technical assistance with regard to methods and techniques of community-building and community changemaking. However, the emphasis on reflective consultation, rather than education/training/technical assistance, is what makes the SCOPE fellowship unique.
We anticipate that there are many aspiring resident community changemakers living in Sarasota County. Are you one of them? Do you know of others? If so, especially as we are in the “talent-scouting” phase, we hope you’ll let us know!
Please contact Dr. Allison Pinto at apinto@scopexcel.org or 941.365.8751.
From a Communiplexity Perspective, Are We Measuring What Counts?
This week, invitations went out for the 3rd Annual Communiplexity Summit, which SCOPE is once again co-hosting. What is “communiplexity,” you ask? It’s an orientation that combines the theories and approaches of complexity and community change, in order to discover and invent new ways to understand and participate in our own communities.
Complexity is a relatively new, inter-disciplinary paradigm that has been developing since the 1980’s. Some people describe it as an updated version of systems thinking. From a complexity perspective, a community is recognized as a dynamic network of diverse change agents interacting with one another and the environment to co-evolve over time. Complexity emphasizes processes of self-organization among change agents as the central means of fostering the ongoing health, resilience and hardiness of a system, whether that system is an individual, a family, an organization, or a whole community.
Although the complexity approach may seem intuitive to people who focus on community organizing and sustainability efforts, it typically requires an overriding of deeply held assumptions about community development and systems change that have been imported from traditional social science and the business world. Traditional, “Newtonian” science emphasizes linearity and assumes that a whole system can be understood through a detailed analysis of all its parts. Traditional business models reflect this orientation by emphasizing the development of highly detailed master plans created by experts, followed by the disciplined implementation of these plans to achieve pre-specified outcomes, in order to confirm the “achievement” of sustainability. Emphasis traditionally is placed on directing processes, preventing deviations from plans, eliminating environmental threats and maintaining stability.
In contrast, a complexity approach assumes that cause-effect pathways are highly numerous and multi-directional and a whole system is more than a sum of its parts. Because agents have free will and the environment is continually changing, individual and system behaviors are often unpredictable and uncontrollable. Facilitating the ongoing health and sustainability of a system therefore involves facilitating its ability to self-organize in continually adaptive, flexible and responsive ways. Sustainability is about cultivating relationships, assets, strengths, and capital to enable perpetual “goodness of fit.”
Through the lens of communiplexity, we pay attention to different aspects of community than are traditionally emphasized, and we continually ask questions about:
Agency — Are the people and other change agents in the system exhibiting too much or too little initiative and / or responsivity to prompt changes in support of increased community well-being?
Energy - Is there too much or too little energy (e.g. information, knowledge, emotion, money) to support decisions and actions affecting community well-being?
Connection - Are there too many or too few connections between people and other change agents to enable energy to flow among and between agents to support increased community well-being?
Diversity-Are there too many or too few differences among people and other change agents to generate creative approaches and workable solutions in support of community well-being?
Reflective Function- Is there too much or too little self / other understanding among people and other change agents to discern similarities and differences in perspectives regarding community well-being?
Containment - Is there too much or too little containment of energy within the system to address problems and support innovations regarding community well-being?
Scalability - Are the interconnections within and between systems at multiple scales too frequently maintained, such that they enable small problems to spread and amplify into major catastrophes? Or are the interconnections too frequently disrupted, such that they do not enable small discoveries to spread and amplify into major innovations?
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When these are the things we want to be able to track on a continual basis in order to optimize community well-being, there are implications for the kinds of data we gather, exchange, and make visible as a community - as citizens, as organizations, as sectors, as governments, and as funders.
Einstein said, “Not everything that counts can be measured. Not everything that can be measured counts.” From a communiplexity perspective, how are we doing as a community here in Sarasota County?
In Search of Aspiring Resident Community Changemakers
Over the past year, SCOPE has been developing a community fellowship for “resident community changemakers.” See this January 2011 blog post for a description of what that means. In January 2012, a new cadre of local residents will begin the 9-month fellowship. SCOPE will provide weekly reflective consultation and access to various resources on community-building and community change to support the development of fellows. A stipend will be offered as well as a diversity of opportunities to connect with people and groups of talented community changemakers. Interested in applying? A preliminary informational session will be taking place on:
Tuesday, November 1st
6:00 - 7:00
SCOPE Building: 1226 N. Tamiami Trail.
For further information, you can also contact Allison Pinto, Ph.D. at apinto@scopexcel.org