Ombudsman Program: Care Facility Rights Group Passes Torch, Searches for Volunteers

Posted

Before volunteering his time with the Long-Term Care Ombudsman program for Washington, Paul Tosch said he had a lot to learn about how people grow old in the state. He and his wife, Trudy, felt a calling to work with the elderly, but he said he wasn’t even aware that nursing homes existed.

“I thought you got sick in your house, you went to the hospital and you get better and you went home and there was nothing in between there,” he recalled.

This year, the Tosches retired from the Ombudsman program after serving as volunteers for 19 years and Paul serving as Regional Long-Term Care Ombudsman Coordinator for Lewis, Mason and Thurston counties for the last 16 years. Like many things, the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way the agency works, and Tosch said with their advancing years visiting nursing homes became difficult for them because they, too, are in a vulnerable population. But Tosch said the heart of the program remains the same: to help residents of long-term care facilities find their voice.

“The hope is I’ve done something and I hope it was big enough that they’ll remember, not so much the volunteer Paul Tosch, but that regional ombudsman program, that they did a lot of work to help each person out,” Tosch said of the legacy he hopes he leaves behind. 

The Long-Term Care Ombuds (the gender-neutral term now preferred by those working within the system) are mandated in every state by the federal Older Americans Act. There are about 500 ombuds in Washington state and in Southwest Washington, the state Ombudsman Coordinator works as Independent contractors through the Lewis Mason Thurston County Area Agency on Aging. That office currently oversees volunteer ombuds who visit 207 facilities in Lewis, Mason and Thurston counties: 170 adult family homes; 24 assisted living facilities; and 13 skilled nursing facilities. These volunteers’ jobs are to monitor the living situations of residents in these facilities to ensure they are well taken care of.

“Many people, lots of people, don’t have family, don’t have many visitors, we are their touchstone because we are there for them and for them only,” said Sheila Johnson Teeter, who has been serving as the regional Ombudsman coordinator since Tosch’s retirement.

Volunteer ombuds are assigned local long-term care facilities to visit, where they are tasked with advocating on behalf of residents in these facilities. Tosch explained that the goal is to visit: nursing homes about once a week; and larger care facilities and adult family homes about once a month. Volunteers visit with residents and listen to any complaints they have. Complaints can be something small such as a resident’s morning coffee consistently reaching them too cold or larger such as complaints of abuse. An ombuds’ job is to advocate for the resident to attempt to solve the issue by talking to staff and administrators, which is how the majority of issues are solved, Tosch noted. Ombuds program does not have the power to close or reprimand a facility but in extreme cases where they are unable to solve an issue, they can refer it to agencies that can. No matter the route for reconciliation, the mandate remains the same for the ombuds, Tosch noted.

“We’re resident directed. We cannot go to anybody else to pass on a complaint without the resident’s permission,” Tosch said. “We empower and we educate the residents on their rights.” 

Advocating for those rights became a bit harder for volunteers this year when the COVID-19 pandemic closed long-term care facilities to visitors. Tosch explained that since the ombudsman program is federally mandated, their volunteers could have continued to visit facilities but they made the decision that ceasing physical visits was better for both the health of the residents and their volunteers, many of whom fall into high-risk categories.

“The state ombudsman said ‘for now, no entering. But let’s figure out what to do,’” Tosch said. “So, we’d look into the windows and we went to phone calls. I’ve spent the last seven months with a sore ear because I’ve been on the phone with people.”



Volunteers with the Ombudsman program are just now physically getting back into local facilities, though some facilities are still restricting visitors because of concerns for the health of their residents with COVID-19 cases soaring once again statewide. Even in the facilities they visit, ombuds have to be masked and stay socially distanced, which can make diagnosing if residents are being well cared for difficult. She gave the example that when she visited her own father, she could not always tell by looking at him but when she hugged him, she could tell if he had lost weight or not.

“It’s been a real struggle to be an advocate for people when you can’t lay hands on them,” Johnson Teeter said.

Another struggle brought on by the pandemic is the program’s need for volunteers. Johnson Teeter explained that before COVID, there were 18 volunteers covering Lewis County and now they are down to 10 volunteers. She said many of their volunteers are older or have underlying health issues and are not comfortable going to these facilities. 

“It’s like a perfect storm,” Johnson Teeter said. “COVID hit and many of these folks had been doing this a long time, they’re older and they decided it was time to go.”

Filling a volunteer ombuds position takes no special skills and training is provided, said Tosch, a retired airline pilot. The Tosches’ interest in working with the elderly started in 1966 when they helped care for an uncle while he was in hospice care for the last three months of his life. The experienced sparked an interest in finding volunteer work with the elderly.

“It is such satisfaction to get a resident some help,” he said.

Johnson Teeter was actually recruited into the program by Tosch, who handed her a brochure about it at an event 14 years ago. A now retired state worker, Johnson said she also had an interest in working with the elderly that spanned to her youth when she would visit her grandfather at the facility where he worked. When she started with the program, she was still working full time and noted that volunteers have extremely flexible hours that can be scheduled around a job.

“When I first started, I would only do weekends and holidays because that’s when I was able to do it,” she said.

For more information about the Long Term Care Ombuds program, go to waombudsman.org or Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program | LMTAAA or contact Sheila Johnson Teeter at Sheila.teeter@mschelps.org.