On Wednesday, U.S. Representative Bill Foster (D-IL) visited Heritage Woods of Batavia, a Gardant-managed affordable assisted living community in northeastern Illinois.
During the visit, they discussed several workforce issues, including staffing challenges, concerns with proposed CMS staffing mandates, and targeted immigration reform to bring in nurses from foreign countries. They also discussed the difficulty hospitals are having discharging patients because of the challenges of finding an available nursing home bed, and the Illinois Supportive Living program as a model for affordable assisted living, benefiting residents and their families and saving the federal and state governments money..
Lawmakers are in the midst of their annual August recess, meeting with constituents and holding community events back in their states and districts. We need your help to be part of these discussions and to tell the story of senior living!
To help more senior living communities join in our grassroots advocacy efforts to educate and inform lawmakers on the value of senior living and our policy solutions, Argentum prepared a toolkit on hosting lawmakers for community visits, so they can see first-hand daily life of residents and caregivers and better understand our challenges and the legislative solutions we have proposed.
The toolkit includes sample invitations you can send to lawmakers, a sample itinerary or tour structure, best practices for preparing for your visit, how to make your request for support of legislation and continue your conversation after the event concludes, and information on how to get started and work with Argentum and your State Partners in setting up these events.
We strongly encourage all Argentum member communities to host lawmakers as part of community tours. If you are interested in hosting a lawmaker, please reach out to Kyle Loeber at kloeber@argentum.org.
