welchkin67 0 Report Share Posted July 15, 2008 Hello my name is Sonia Welch. I am from Texas. I am anActivity Director for a nursing home with 45 residents. My question is does anyone have rules or guidlines for the resident council meetings. Reason I am asking is because was wondering what is the protocol for the time table for holding the offices. would appreciate any information on this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ella 0 Report Share Posted July 15, 2008 I am from Michigan so I am not sure if the same rules apply in your state. You can check with your state surveyors to see what the rules are in your state. I have never had a problem with our surveyors and they have always been very pleased with my Resident Council Minutes and Resident Council Recommendation which is the form I use to track resident concerns with each department. As far as the offices are concerned, my By-Laws state that there will be a President, Vice-President and Secretary. The President shall preside over all meetings and in his/her absence the Vice-President shall take over. The Secretary shall record the minutes and a staff member may act as secretary if no resident is able to complete these duties. Elections shall be held every two years in January. The elections wil be held by ballot vote and set-up by the president with the assistance of the Activity Director. Nominations will be formed during the December Resident Council Meeting of the Preceeding year. I hope this helps! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kmoore 0 Report Share Posted July 15, 2008 Hello my name is Sonia Welch. I am from Texas. I am anActivity Director for a nursing home with 45 residents. My question is does anyone have rules or guidlines for the resident council meetings. Reason I am asking is because was wondering what is the protocol for the time table for holding the offices. would appreciate any information on this. Hi Sonia, I'm kathy also from Tx. I don't believe there is alot of guidlines for the resident council meetings. I have been a Activity dir. for about 12 yrs. and not once has the state ever guestion me about the council. However we did just go thur our survey and the state lady ask about who my resident president was. And I told her that the residents has wanted me to act as it for the past three years. She was ok with it, but for the meeting they have with the residents she did want me to point one for that meeting since staff can't be in there. Hope this helps. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scushman 0 Report Share Posted July 15, 2008 My understanding is that they can hold office for a year and then you need to nominate again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ILoveMyLVN 0 Report Share Posted July 17, 2008 Hello my name is Sonia Welch. I am from Texas. I am anActivity Director for a nursing home with 45 residents. My question is does anyone have rules or guidlines for the resident council meetings. Reason I am asking is because was wondering what is the protocol for the time table for holding the offices. would appreciate any information on this. Hi, In CA there are regulations on it, as far as keeping minutes. Residents keep minutes if they are able (often need help by AD). The President holds office and can be elected. You may choose to open up the meeting by saying the pledge of allegiance first. Then present "old business" from last month, things they mentioned in the meeting and what the follow up was. For example last month they said the laundry was not being delivered on time. You follow up by giving laundry supervisor's response to their concern. Also in CA they look for issues to be resolved w/in 2 months and if not then you will likely get a deficiency. You can make up some forms which list the res. concern and allow the department head affected the chance to respond and list what their correction is. These forms must be returned to you within 3 days. Again, I don't know if it applies to your state, but under federal they are probably looking for similar things. You'd cover the new business from the current month, and then follow up with it. One technique I heard that was good: Have a department head there at your meeting to present new happenings in their department, news and what they have been working on. Dietary got some new menu listings, adding a new breakfast time later in AM to accomodate "culture change", and so on. This gets them in a good mood, feeling empowered and included in planning. After that then ease into eliciting their suggestions and they may be less likely to launch into instant gripe fest because they are in better spirits. Hope this may help you. I have yet to institute these new ideas but was very excited to learn them recently. Will try out in about a week for the first time. ~GCL Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kevinm 2 Report Share Posted August 17, 2008 (edited) Rules for Resident Council do vary, but most have the same idea, Elect prez, vice pez, and secretary, (as able) have monthly meetings and take minutes, forward concerns to proper departments, make sure there is a paper trail of it all. Now I have a Question re: elections of Council members, do you allow only residents to vote, or can staff vote too? Edited August 17, 2008 by kevinm Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jen 0 Report Share Posted August 18, 2008 Rules for Resident Council do vary, but most have the same idea, Elect prez, vice pez, and secretary, (as able) have monthly meetings and take minutes, forward concerns to proper departments, make sure there is a paper trail of it all. Now I have a Question re: elections of Council members, do you allow only residents to vote, or can staff vote too? Staff should be in Resident council by invitation only. I do go in monthly to take the minutes & assist the president in moving the meeting along. The residents do allow family to attend, but families have no vote or voice. Occasionally other Dept. managers attend to talk about thier departments & answer any questions the residents may have, but I ask the residents first if they may attend. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tamera 0 Report Share Posted August 18, 2008 Actually, there are some rules for holding offices in Resident Council. We allow the resident's to hold offices for a year and then hold elections again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ILoveMyLVN 0 Report Share Posted August 19, 2008 Ok so just the residents vote for elected officers? I have a meeting coming up in a few weeks and we don't have officers yet. They need to have them by this meeting. Our setup is that I have different people come in each day to our ADHC. We now have a set date for our meeting. To elect officials, would I then have all patients present vote on the day of the meeting for whomever wanted to run for election that day? This is the only thing I can think of because if we held an election lasting throughout the week beforehand, then it different people would be there that can't be present on the meeting day... Any suggestions to share?? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hope 0 Report Share Posted August 25, 2008 IND: Just residents vote for council officers. Being an election year, you could make a pretty big deal out of this. Be aware of that "One" person every home has, will want to run, and ours turned out to be a vice president, meaning she gets to feel important without being the top gun. During last election, I handed out copies of a paper for people who wanted to run for office, then those turned in, I typed up ballots to be turned in to me. A few who are alert and oriented but don't like to attend council, did vote, but it's the regulars who come and half of them are the officers, so there wasn't a big competition, but the "one" felt like a winner, and that would have been the only "sore loser" at our place. All's well that ends well. Our president is losing ability, but can still function by asking for old, new minutes, asking for pledge of allegiance, closing meeting, etc. We use a back scratcher as her gavel and she loves that! Our state surveyors always ask me to go to council members and invite them to a set meeting with them. They might ask staff who the council pres is; they usually ask for 3 months council notes. As far as staff in meetings: Since none of our who are interested in council could accurately record details, I do take the notes, the secretary signs them-has to be reminded how to spell last name, but penmanship is nice! Also, we have in the council notes that the Rec Dir. and/or Asst. is always invited to each regular monthly meeting to keep the minutes; one of the questions each month is whether they wish to have any other dept heads at the next meeting; doesn't usually result in anyone being asked, but that way, there is an open line of communication documented that is in place. Sometimes they might ask for dietician when she comes. Our company's forms ask that each resident sign in; it is in the minutes that I write their names down so they will preserve dignity of those who can't write, write badly/slowly, as only 2-3 could write their names well, and the patience level of the others might cause people to show exasperation. It is my understanding that an issue with 2 or more Residents agreeing is a council issue; if only one Resident has that particular issue, it is given to SSD as a grievance and handled separately. This was just gone over with our Rec Consultant and SSD. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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