Join NADSA Contact Us Advertise   July 5, 2008 Home About NADSA Adult Day Services: The Facts Advocacy & Policy Events & Opportunities Newsroom Publications & Resources Message from the Chairperson Message from the Chairperson Good Wine, Fast Cars and Fireworks NADSA had a board meeting on March 30th, in Washington DC. Our meeting was sandwiched between the American Society on Aging/National Council on Aging conference and the American Association of Homes and Services on Aging. We had terrific attendance. Many of our board members are involved in these other organizations and they attended meetings, brown bag lunch discussions, visited senators and representatives in their Capitol offices, and canvassed the exhibit halls armed with NADSA information and general adult day services information. It was great! We made our mark in March in Washington, D.C. I left with three images ingrained in my mind... Fast Cars, Good Wine and Fireworks! (Before you get any ideas about how much we were meeting and what other extracurricular activities your board was partaking in…. they were only visuals!!) Fast Cars—my first car was a Ford Fairlane… white with red interior. I paid $100 for it. Sold it for $50. It was not a fast car. It was a car that got me to my senior year in college and to my first job. When I met my husband, many years later he had a Pontiac Trans Am, a Firebird with a blue bird on the hood of the car…that was a fast car! I was a little scared of that car, but also in awe, especially when I learned that you have to drive cars like that faster as you get to a corner or a curve, not slower. You have to lean into the fast car, go with the momentum and learn to not be afraid! Five years ago my husband and son rebuilt a 1979 Grand Prix- it has a 450 something engine in it, it has a rebuilt “rear end”, it has racing slicks. I have learned that fast cars are meant to be leaned into….. they work better when you push down on the gas and go 102 miles an hour down the drag strip, not hold back. NADSA is in a state like that now. We have such potential and can't be scared of what is coming at us. We have to make decisions by trusting each other and make them fast. We have to support each other and not be afraid of the other being successful. There is enough work for all of us, if we lean into it during the curves! NADSA is trying to lean into any and all possibilities in these next few years, to get the most out of the incredible energy around the country for community based care. Good Wine—two years ago when the NADSA conference was in San Francisco, my husband and I went to Napa Valley for a week after the conference. How can you tell a good wine from a bad wine--in NAPA when you are on vacation in November, from Wisconsin??? All the wine was good, not one that we tasted was bad. Good wine gets better with age…but all good wine has its time--you have to partake, jump in and drink it… or it will taste like vinegar in a few years…. Now is the time for Community Based Care--right now. We have to get together, share with each other, work with researchers and government officials, innovate and create new programs, and document client outcomes…we can't wait until we can smell the vinegar! Fireworks—Fireworks show others that we have something to celebrate. We've accomplished some things, we have had successes and we are happy about them. NADSA has a right to celebrate. We have increased our membership. We have developed relationships with many new partners. We have joined ranks with eight state associations to forge amazing joint projects. We are a strong player in community-based long-term care services across the country. Fireworks to celebrate...celebrate each others' successes, celebrate aging, celebrate our families' struggles…We have to stop comparing ourselves to nursing home, home health, each other, worrying about divvying up “the “pie”, worrying about whether we are a social model, adult day health model, medical model, respite… we have to celebrate the incredible opportunities we have right now to be a part of the de-institutionalization of elder care…. Celebrate being a full fledged partner in the future of aging services. I hope you, also, can take these three images with you: Fast Cars, Good Wine and Fireworks!!