Thursday Ramble : My Day Job

 

My day-job is as Director of the American Bar Association Commission on Law and Aging. 

My interest in issues in aging started, as a family caregiver for a grandfather with dementia, during my last couple of years of high school.  And I have been out of high school a lot of decades.  

I went to law school planning to do planning, zoning, land use, and construction defects law.  The summer between my first and second years of law school I volunteered at a local legal aid office.  The staff attorney who focused on helping older clients, took me under her wing and I fell in love with helping older clients.  That volunteer time, changed the course of my life.  After law school I managed a senior focused legal aid program for a decade, I was a contract trainer for AARP on legal issues and older adults, and that led to my day job.  

For nearly 14 years I have been a member of the staff of the ABA Commission on Law and Aging (COLA.) We do interdisciplinary research on complex issues in law and aging, with a focus on improving the quality of life and quality of care of adults as they age.  We provide training to professionals in law and aging, this year our training has reached over 9,000 participants.  We publish widely, on average our staff publishes 25 articles per year.  I write my share of those.  

Being a part of the American Bar Association gives us great strength, many of the best lawyers in the world, are members of the ABA.  But it does not give us great financial support, only 12% of our budget is from the ABA, 88% of our budget is from outside sources.  

An important part of the 88% is support by individual donors, people like you, who think protecting the rights, of older adults, fighting abuse, reforming guardianship and promoting personal autonomy in health care decision making is important. 

Last January, having outlasted or outlived my colleagues, I took on responsibility as Director of the Commission on Law and Aging.  A part of my responsibility, is asking for support.  

This year, the Commission on Law and Aging was included ABA Giving Day.  This day marks a national recognition of Pro Bono service by attorneys.  Our goal is to raise $10,000 in gifts.

There are two ways you can help me with the effort:

    Share this post on your social media or with your network

    Make a donation, in any amount that is comfortable for you. 

    To support our work use this link, and scroll down the feature box     for the Commission on Law and Aging with the image that is             above. givingday.americanbar.org

There are three measures of success, meeting our goal of raising $10,000, the number of individual donations, the number of new donors. Every gift gift makes a difference.