Working Together to Help Navajo Elders

[Thunderwolf, MSN, RN]

Many of the Navajo Nation elders living here don't receive adequate care, but three Crownpoint agencies are working together to solve the problem.

The Crownpoint Elderly Home, the Navajo Housing Service and the Community Health Representative program provide care, company, housing and transportation to the elders.

"We take care of the elderly by giving them baths, showers" and performing tasks that they can no longer do for themselves, Esther Kee said, a house parent at the Crownpoint Elderly Home.

Kee and other house parents take care of five elders who call the facility their home. They make sure the elders go to their medical appointments, and sometimes they take them out on leisure trips.

The elders are there on a short- and long-term basis, Kee said. Sometimes they are there on an emergency basis in which the staff members care for elders who are there from the hospital. "Either they have no heat or nobody to cook for them," Kee said.

Full article: http://www.reznetnews.org/article/feature-article/working-together-help-navajo-elders