For too many years I have noted instances of how Senior Community aides, aid supervisors, and their supervisors are negligent in providing the "live well support" needed by the elderly. The older I get, the easier it is to see the obvious shortfalls in job description requirements. What most facility residing seniors get is compliance with a generic list of "to do tasks", which by definition, exclude all tasks/courtesies not on the list. As such, senior's "live-well support" is almost entirely dependent on the sociological profiles and personality attributes of the individuals composing the care team.
Caring for Seniors, unlike caring for children where adults having experienced childhood and are instinctively more discerning, no adult has directly experienced advanced age. They simply have no personal experiences stored in memory to trigger senior need recognition. Compounding this unavoidable disconnect, most low paid care givers have sociological histories woefully deficient in general compassion and communication.
Consider how perplexing, disturbing and frightening it would be for the typical job seeking caregiver to be told that their job would be to, for 40 hours weekly, share residential space with 12 advanced age persons during which time they had no task assignment except to help the women and men "to be the best they can be". Likely, not a successful recruiting strategy. I have tried.....they just run out the door as if I had asked them to sign up for a 50 year mission to Mars