Opening your page…
You can still use the navigation while it loads.
Opening your page…
You can still use the navigation while it loads.
DSD Service System · Practice
What it means to grow older with a lifelong disability, what happens when the parent who has provided support for fifty years can no longer, why people with disabilities get worse health care, and how staff can change what they can reach.
50–55 minutes · 5 lessons · Voluntary learning
Understand how aging with a lifelong disability differs from other kinds of aging, and why the service system was not built for it.
Recognize the situation of a parent who has provided support for decades and is now aging, and plan for a transition before a crisis forces one.
Learn how symptoms get attributed to a person's disability without examination, and how to catch it in a record.
Name the barriers people with disabilities meet in health care and the accommodations that address each.
Run a short review of one person's health care access and produce one change with an owner.
For one person you support who lives with an aging parent, find out whether a plan exists for when the parent can no longer provide support, and start one if not.
People with lifelong disabilities are living longer than any previous generation, and the service system was not built for that. Many still live with parents who are now in their eighties. Health conditions of aging arrive earlier for some and are missed in others because every symptom is attributed to the disability. Health care itself is harder to reach: inaccessible offices, rushed appointments, clinicians who talk to the support worker. This module covers what aging with a disability involves, the aging caregiver, diagnostic overshadowing, the access barriers built into health care, and a health-access review you can run with one person. Nothing here is scored, ranked or collected.
Any change from a person's own baseline is a medical question until a clinician has answered it.
Catch the changes that get attributed to disability or aging without examination, plan caregiver transitions before a crisis, and make health care appointments the person can actually use.
Run the health-access review with one person and book the appointment it finds.
Participation and course completion in this program do not count toward DHS-required training credits unless management, a director, or DHS leadership expressly approves an exception.
State program information on services for Minnesotans with disabilities.
State information on services for older Minnesotans and caregivers.
Minnesota's statewide information and assistance line for older adults and caregivers.
Guidance on aging, dementia and health in people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
Federal public health information on health disparities and health care access for people with disabilities.
Federal agency supporting community living for older adults and people with disabilities, including caregiver support.