Go Lean Commentary
Which would you rather do:
Move your aging parents in with you … or move in with them?
This is a perplexing question that face most families … eventually; see the aligning VIDEO in the Appendix below.
This is especially true in the Caribbean as it is our practice to care for our elderly ourselves, not warehouse them in a Senior Care facility; cared for by strangers and professionals.
This Elder-Care preponderance was detailed in a previous Go Lean blog-commentary on March 24, 2014 – one of the first ones – entitled: 10 Things We Want from the US and 10 Things We Don’t Want from the US. That blog, and the hundreds since, all draw attention to the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean – available to download for free. The book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), for the elevation of Caribbean society – for all member-states. That previous blog actually stated:
Family Abandonment
Senior Living Facilities are a big industry in the US. This is due to the family habit of abandoning elderly parents to the care of professional strangers. The Caribbean way traditionally is to house their Senior Citizens with families, whether the economics apply or not.The CU has a prime directive to encourage repatriation back to the Caribbean homeland and assuage societal abandonment. Frankly, senior citizens should avoid the cold climates of North American and EU Diaspora cities.
The care of our seniors is presented in the Go Lean book as paramount – supreme importance. In fact, the book relates the challenges befalling Caribbean society and identifies the needs of our Aging Diaspora as one of the 4 impossible-to-deal-with-alone Agents of Change – Globalization, Climate Change, Technology and the Aging Diaspora. The book declared that we were failing miserably in our societal engines, but the opportunity now exists for re-approachment to the Diaspora that left their homeland 50, 40, 30 and 20-plus years ago. This should have been a economic boon for our communities!
But worse has happened: since the 2013 publication; our societal engines have failed even more. Rather than returning to the Caribbean homeland for retirement, families are now more prone to expatriate their elderly, rather than repatriate. 🙁
Our people are simply securing their seniors in a home … anywhere!
Such a declining trend is not true of all the Agents of Change, like Technology; we have actually improved there. In fact, the catalog of other Agents of Change commentaries in this series, cataloged here:
- 5 Years Later: New Post Office Eco-system – Globalization issues ‘loud and clear’ now.
- 5 Years Later: Climate Change – Coming so fast, so furious.
- 5 Years Later: Technology – Caribbean fully on board.
- 5 Years Later: Aging Diaspora – Finding Home … anywhere.
So now, Caribbean families have been finding homes abroad for their elderly loved one; in contrast to the past, now they have started to bring these aged ones to their Diasporic destinations.
Ouch!
The cold! And the abandonment of their beloved homeland and culture. Surely there must be home-sickness.
We must do better … going forward.
This dreadful trend has been depicted in previous Go Lean commentaries, most notably a submission from September 28, 2016:
‘Time to Go’ – Logic of Senior Emigration
It is a shame-and-a-disgrace – 70 percent of out tertiary-educated – gone! Now we have the report of a 104-year old woman [Jamaica-born May Garcia] who [had] just naturalized to become a US citizen. Just as much as this is a good story for her and America, this is an indictment for us – the Caribbean – and our failures as individual states. …Ms. Garcia is an inspiration. She plainly demonstrates to the planners of a new Caribbean how acute our failures are. This [104 birthday] celebration should have been in her Caribbean homeland, Jamaica. This is our quest!
She should have been like a tree …
… planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither – whatever they do prospers. – The Bible; Psalms 1:3 – New International Version
A “planted tree” analogy relates that she would be firmly established … and others – her children and grandchildren – would come to her.
The theme of this current blog series is “5 Years Later and what is the condition now?“. That theme is to be supplemented with subsequent questions:
- “Have the problems lessened, or have they intensified?”
- “What can we do to mitigate the problems going forward?”
During this 5 year tenure, a blog-commentary was presented in March 4, 2016 highlighting an Elder-Care solution for the region. A summary of that submission follows:
Pre-Fab Housing and Elder-Care Conjunction
Every community needs housing … for their seniors. This is just a basic fact of life: old age and illness … befall us all.Just because an abled-bodied person has a house, it does not make it ideal when the circumstances change to “less than able”, or disabled, or differently-abled. Yet, disabilities are a reality … everyday: Just keep living.
This consideration is very appropriate for the Caribbean. We have some societal defects: consider our abandonment rate, especially among the younger generation, due mainly to a lack of economic opportunities, at home. Assuredly, they emigrate for refuge abroad, and then remit funds back to their Caribbean homelands, often to support their aging parents. These ones have the need for Elder-Care; but Elder-Care consists of more than remittances; many times, it includes nursing.
Providing housing, Elder-Care and nursing can be an economic conjunction, an activity at an intersection. The book Go Lean … Caribbean asserts that “luck” is the intersection of preparation and opportunity; that economic growth can be gained simply by positioning at that intersection and exploiting the opportunities.
…Pre-fab housing solutions are conceivable, believable and achievable. … The Caribbean can and must foster our own solutions. But we have the constant threats of hurricanes, so our pre-fab structures must feature mitigations for storm resistance. The plausible options are depicted in great details in the Go Lean book (Page 207).
The Go Lean book does provide an advocacy for prefab housing (Page 207) and one for Elder-Care (Page 225). In fact, the book/roadmap presents the 3 prime directives to address all Caribbean societal engines:
- Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion and create 2.2 million new jobs.
- Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
- Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.
The book stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 11 – 13):
ix. Whereas the realities of healthcare and an aging population cannot be ignored and cannot be afforded without some advanced mitigation, the Federation must arrange for health plans to consolidate premiums of both healthy and sickly people across the wider base of the entire Caribbean population. The mitigation should extend further to disease management, wellness, mental health, obesity … programs.
xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.
xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes … can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the accedence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.
xxiv. Whereas a free market economy can be induced and spurred for continuous progress, the Federation must install the controls to better manage aspects of the economy: jobs, inflation, savings rate, investments and other economic principles. Thereby attracting direct foreign investment because of the stability and vibrancy of our economy.
The Go Lean book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt new community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to reboot, reform and transform the societal engines of Caribbean society. These empowerments include the basic needs for our Aging Diaspora to seriously consider a return home; the book quote (Page 226):
Aging Population
The CU will facilitate the Caribbean region to be the world’s best address for senior citizens. (The presumed security protection being in place first). This will send the invite to retirees (Caribbean Diaspora and foreign) to welcome their participation and contributions to CU society. This follows the model of Florida and Arizona – a “welcome mat” …
In the last 5 years, the Caribbean has missed out on the great economic and social opportunities to better cater to the Aging Diaspora. We must do better going forward. Yes, we can make our homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂
Download the free e-book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!
Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.
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Appendix VIDEO – Moving In Your Elderly Parents | This Morning – https://youtu.be/U4iHQMDZDuk