Georgia State Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program

Taiwan’s Independent Advocate Program

Becky Kurtz, Director of the Atlanta Regional Commission, Area Agency on Aging, shared some highlights of her trip to the International Symposium on Senior Advocate Ombudsman Program in Taiwan.

The purpose of the trip was to provide the keynote speech at a conference focused on serving individuals in long-term care facilities. For the past 5 years, Taiwan has been building an “Independent Advocate” program for facility residents, linking volunteers to residents who are most vulnerable because they lack family support. They were hungry to learn about the US Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program (LTCOP) and what we have learned over 40 years of our LTCOP history. Their Independent Advocate program has started in 8 (of possible 22) regions of the country. The first of these programs started in 2013. It’s very much a volunteer-based “friendly visitor” model, and less of a complaint/resolution ombudsman model. But they are still trying to figure out the model they want to use. They have borrowed heavily from the United Kingdom and Ireland, as well as the US and Japan, in developing their programs. Thus far, the program has had demonstration funding from the national lottery, which provides grants for demonstration projects, but the program has no source of on-going funding.

Becky participated in a conference at Asia University (in a city called Taichung) that focused on lessons learned from the US program, the status of the program in Taiwan, and the experience of a similar program in Japan. She spent almost all of her time with staff and volunteers developing the Independent Advocate program in Taiwan (starting in 2013, and so far, they have programs beginning in 8 cities). (Asia University Conference Site in Taichung)