Bureaucracy

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Senior Assisted Living - Campbell / Los Gatos Residential Care Home (campbell)

See www.assistedlivingsanjose.com to find out more about a wonderful, loving home providing assisted living and senior housing for seniors at All About Seniors and Kimberly's Elder Care. Imagine an intimate assisted living senior housing option serving Campbell Los Gatos as comfortable as home, but with professional caregivers on site 24/7 to prepare home-cooked meals from scratch, and take care of all the laundry, housekeeping, medications, and activities of daily living. This type of intimacy is only available in a licensed, private residential care home offering assisted living and senior housing for residents of San Jose, Campbell, Los Gatos, and surrounding areas. That’s why we invite you to call for a tour of our home. Our residents are assisted by a minimum of two staff on duty at all times. Our 3:1 client-to-caregiver ratio assures a concierge-level of personalized care that is more intimate than many larger assisted living facilities with ratios of 10 or 12:1. The cornerstone of our assisted living program for seniors and senior housing care is our dedicated staff. By allowing us to care for your loved one, you're assured your "Senior" is surrounded with love and support. Our assisted living and senior housing San Jose facilities have private bedrooms and baths, and accommodate non-ambulatory seniors with ramps and wheelchair exits. Our assisted living for seniors with dementia unit has 24-hour night staff and exit alarms. Unlike large corporate facilities, our assisted living houses are more like home because they actually are private homes in safe neighborhoods. And if you have a special request there are no layers of bureaucracy--you can tell Debra or Patrick directly. Should the assisted living home staff need extra assistance in offering senior housing, the owners can return to any assisted living home within five minutes because all the senior care homes are located in the same West San Jose/Campbell neighborhood where they live. The zip codes close to our home are: 95128 95117 95013 95070 95129 95117 95008 95124 95032 95030 95127 95035 94085 95118 95120 95123 95119 95138 95135 95121 95122 95037 95050 95131 95133 95125 95112 95110 We take pride in keeping our assisted living homes clean and cheerful with a cozy atmosphere reminiscent of a high-touch Bed-and-Breakfast. The assisted living homes are surrounded by lovely landscaped yards with sunny decks and shady patios. In a safe neighborhood with a secured perimeter and exit alarms, our assisted living homes have served the elderly for over 20 years. In addition to daily activities, we enjoy taking the seniors on outings and field trips and arranging in-home entertainment, parties and other activities in the assisted living facility. Basic services include: · Nutritious home-cooked meals and snacks (low fat, low salt diet) · Special diets upon physician's orders · All medications stored, dispensed and reordered by staff · Daily monitoring of residents' health and vital signs · Bathing · Dressing · Grooming · Incontinence Care · Mobility · Daily housekeeping and personal laundry service—all linens provided · Bimonthly in-house podiatrist service · Beautician service provided in-house · All faiths welcomed · Holy communion (Catholic) in home · 24-Hour Supervision · Transportation Arrangements · Daily group activities and exercise · In-home entertainment · Newspaper & magazine subscriptions · Cable TV · Shopping · Social Programs · Telephone · Toileting · Visually Impaired Assistance · Wellness Program Contact Us Today! We invite you to talk with our clients' families or read through our many thank-you cards! Please call Debra for more information or to schedule a tour at (408) 483-1030. We have no shared rooms—our private room rates range from $3500-$4500/month depending on level of care. If your senior needs financial or governmental assistance, we suggest calling the helpful advisers at the Santa Clara County Council on Aging (408-296-8290) who have assisted living counselors. All of our assisted living homes are licensed by the State of California, Department of Social Services. License#435294147, 435294219, and 435294206. Please call call Debra at 408 483-1030 to schedule a tour and visit us at www.assistedlivingsanjose.com Pictured Below: Owners Debra & Patrick

That was then ... Matthews lauded "experience" of Bush's Cabinet picks in 2001, but says Obama's selection of prior administration vets is "crap"

On the November 18 edition of MSNBC's Hardball, amid reports that President-elect Barack Obama has decided to nominate Clinton Justice Department veteran Eric Holder to be attorney general, host Chris Matthews said, "This is what you do when you don't have elections. You simply promote the people ... who had the deputy jobs. You could do this in any bureaucratic state, you could do it in the old Soviet Union. ... You don't need elections for this crap." But in 2001, responding to then President-elect George W. Bush's selection to his cabinet of veterans of prior administrations, Matthews offered a very different assessment of such actions. Purporting to quote "an NBC driver" on the January 3, 2001, edition of Hardball, Matthews said the driver, a Vietnam veteran, is "like a lot of guys you meet," and said, "They want guys who've been around and survived." Matthews then said of then-President elect George W. Bush's Cabinet picks: "You've got it in this Cabinet. There's some real heavyweights in terms of experience." At the time, Bush had nominated Donald Rumsfeld to be secretary of defense, the same position he held under President Ford, and Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under George H.W. Bush, to be secretary of state. He had also named Dick Cheney, defense secretary under President George H.W. Bush, to be his running mate. While Matthews raised the question of whether, in his Cabinet picks, Bush "risk[ed] being overwhelmed by their maturity and veteran status," he did not suggest that Bush was mimicking "the old Soviet Union" in selecting people who had served in previous administrations. From the January 3, 2001, edition of MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews (retrieved from the Nexis news database): MATTHEWS: Let's talk about this big fight over the Cabinet. First of all, it's -- the most impressive Cabinet appointment in the world right now is -- is Colin Powell, your friend. BILL BENNETT (secretary of education under President Reagan): Well, obviously... MATTHEWS: Clearly. BENNETT: ... hailed worldwide and everyone in America loves him. MATTHEWS: Probably the most impressive Cabinet appointment since Jefferson or whatever back in the early days of our republic. Do you think he might find his way into a vice-presidential nomination in four years? BENNETT: Sure he can. And who knows what Cheney wants to do? He could have found his way into a presidential nomination. If you remember, some of us were encouraging... MATTHEWS: But this will be the less -- this would be less dramatic. This would be a smooth transition. BENNETT: Yeah, this would be an easy transition. Exactly right. MATTHEWS: And he -- I've been thinking about this overnight. The Bush people have a tremendous ace in the hole. It's Colin Powell. He may run the next time. That ticket would be undefeatable. BENNETT: Well, it's an ace in the hole for that. It's, also, an ace in the hole, I think, for some serious issue of foreign policy. If we need an appeal to the nation, the president makes it. Colin Powell can also speak and persuade a lot of people. MATTHEWS: I had an NBC driver the other day, I was doing the TODAY show, and he said something really powerful to me, like a lot of guys you meet. You know what he said? He said people -- and he was in Vietnam for -- he said people like to be around veterans. They like to be with a guy who's been there 10 months. They don't want to be surrounded by raw recruits, and... BENNETT: That's right. MATTHEWS: ... and guys that -- you know, just guys who were brought in -- grunts, as they were called. BENNETT: Right. MATTHEWS: They want guys who've been around and survived. You've got it in this Cabinet. There's some real heavyweights in terms of experience. BENNETT: Yeah. MATTHEWS: Does your guy, the president elect, risk being overwhelmed by their maturity and veteran status? I mean, you've got Dick Cheney in the room. Don Rumsfeld, the former secretary of Defense. You've got Colin Powell, a world hero. And you're the least... BENNETT: Right. MATTHEWS: ... impressive guy in the room. BENNETT: Well, I don't think so, but very strong. I -- you know, when I went to a university once, the president of the university told me if your department chairman -- there's only one test for a good department chairman -- hire people whose -- who are -- whose light will shine brighter than his, that's a secure guy. This is a very strong bunch of people. It's also -- and a lot of people are somewhat surprised -- a conservative Cabinet. I mean, it's... MATTHEWS: Very. BENNETT: ... diverse and all this, but this is a very strong, conservative Cabinet. From the November 18 edition of Hardball: MATTHEWS: But first tonight, as President-elect Obama assembles his governing team, some of the members of the new administration charged with change look awfully familiar. Joining me, MSNBC's political analyst Pat Buchanan and American Prospect editor and author of Obama's Challenge Robert Kuttner. Pat, let's take a look at some of these faces. I mean, they are not the new kids on the block. Eric Holder tonight, for attorney general. Hillary Clinton for secretary of state. Joe Lieberman stays on as senator from Connecticut and prime member of the Democratic caucus. Look at this list. We've got Lieberman on, [John] Podesta [co-chairman of Obama's transition team], [Rahm] Emanuel [incoming White House chief of staff], Holder, Clinton -- the list goes on. I'm looking for the new face. Pat? BUCHANAN: Well, we're in -- look, we're in retread city, is what's going on. This is the Nixon -- I mean, the Clinton alumni association showing up here. MATTHEWS: No, you're a Nixon alumni association. BUCHANAN: I'm Nixon alumni. But you know, but Eric Holder is, I mean, he's a very competent, able man, but the thing he's most famous for, as you mentioned, is a pardon -- Frank Rich's pardon, which he expedited on behalf of Bill Clinton. He was going to run for mayor of D.C. He's as local as you can get. I mean, I don't see anyone from outside, real change here. I mean, these people are undeniably competent, but this is what you'd expect if someone else had won. MATTHEWS: This is what you do when you don't have elections. You simply promote the people -- Robert Kuttner -- who had the deputy jobs. You could do this in any bureaucratic state, you could do it in the old Soviet Union, do it anywhere you have a bureaucracy. You don't need to hold elections to promote deputies to the top job when it comes time, right? You don't need elections for this crap, do you? Robert? KUTTNER: Well, I was disappointed -- MATTHEWS: You just keep promoting people from within in any old, tired bureaucracy. That's what you do. You don't think. It's very Republican thinking, Pat, by the way. By the way, he didn't pardon Frank Rich of The New York Times; he pardoned Marc Rich. BUCHANAN: It was Marc Rich. MATTHEWS: I know you've got Frank on your mind. But, uh -- just kidding. We all make mistakes here.

Child protection stifled by £30m computer system - report

A government computer system intended to improve the handling of child abuse cases has led to social workers having to spend more than 100 hours for every case filling out forms, cutting the time they have to make visits.Reports by two universities have revealed that the Integrated Children's System (ICS), launched in 2005 following the death of Victoria Climbié, is so laborious it typically takes more than 10 hours to fill in initial assessment forms for a child considered to be at risk. A "core assessment" takes a further 48 hours on average, according to government-commissioned research by York University. The system, which cost £30m to implement, creates deadlines that further restrict the time available for family visits.Concern about the system comes as Haringey council faces two government inquiries into the handling of the case of 17-month-old Baby P, who died from more than 50 injuries despite being under a child protection order. Last night the council's Labour cabinet met for the first time since the story emerged. The Liberal Democrats on the council called for the resignations of councillor Liz Santry, cabinet member for children and young people, and the council leader, George Meehan.Meehan last night issued a "heartfelt and unreserved apology" on behalf of the council to "those who knew and cared for the well being of Baby P; those residents of Haringey who feel let down by the actions of the child protection agencies in our area; and the wider public."We are very sorry for the events which led up to the death of Baby P; sorry for the suffering he endured; sorry for the failure of all the child protection agencies involved to protect him, to save his life. We are truly sorry," he said.He defended the borough's social workers who, he said, "have continued to do their best, often in very difficult circumstances". He called on the public "to recognise that denigrating their service does nothing to improve child protection".Meehan added: "There has, however, been failure by all the agencies involved to protect this little child from the pain and suffering which led to his death; and for that we are truly and genuinely sorry."Earlier, Ed Balls, the secretary of state for children, schools and families, unveiled new laws aimed at protecting vulnerable children.The NSPCC called on the directors of children's services in 150 English local authorities to examine all their child protection plans and identify by Christmas those children in greatest danger.But the pressure on social workers, effectively tied to their desks by bureaucracy, reveals systemic problems in child protection. "Workers report being more worried about missed deadlines than missed visits," said Professor Sue White, who is studying five child protection departments for the University of Lancaster. "The [computer] system regularly takes up 80% of their day."ICS replaced a system where social workers wrote case notes in narrative form, which many argue made it easier for different officials to quickly pick up the details of complex cases. In the review by the University of York of the first authorities to adopt the system, the use of tick boxes was criticised because of "a lack of precision that could lead to inaccuracy". It added that the system "obscured the family context". The level of detail demanded by ticking boxes "sacrificed the clarity that is needed to make documentation useful," it concluded."If you go into a social work office today there's no chatter, nobody is talking about the cases, it is just people tapping at computers," said White. One social worker interviewed by White's team said: "I spend my day click- clicking and then I'll get an email from someone else - say a fostering agency- asking for a bit more information on a child: 'Could we please have a pen picture of the three children'. It's horrendous. "It's impossible to get a picture of the child," said another. "It's all over the place on the computer system ... That coupled with the number of people involved in the case makes my life very difficult."Eileen Monroe, an expert on child protection at the London School of Economics, said some local authorities are petitioning the government to allow them to drop the system. "The programme is set up to continually nag you, and the child's misery just doesn't nag as loudly."Baby PChild protectionPolitics and technologyguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Jonathan Glancey: Frozen skyline as architecture works out how not to come to a halt in the recession

'I didn't lose any work in the first recession I experienced," says Zaha Hadid, "because I didn't have any work." This was the early 1970s, the time of the three-day week, when the lights of Great Britain Ltd appeared to be switching off for good. "I was drawing with freezing cold hands in rooms lit by candles. It seems almost unbelievable now. If I learned something, it was that anything can happen. We're doing well today, but this is partly because so many of our projects are in places like Dubai, which seem immune from recession. But you never know."You certainly don't. Last week, Frank Gehry's first major project in Britain was ditched, making it the first big victim, architecturally, of the credit crunch. Plans for a dramatic development of 750 flats facing the sea at Brighton were dropped when the developer, Karis, failed to find fresh funds, three months after Dutch bank ING pulled out. If Gehry - creator of the famous "Bilbao effect", by which thrilling architecture triggers urban regeneration - can be tossed aside by recession-wary banks, what about less celebrated architects?"Housebuilders are in such a hurry to drop projects," says Amanda Baillieu, editor of Building Design magazine, "they're text-messaging architects to tell them to stop work. At the same time, banks are foreclosing on loans made to small architectural practices set up over the past few years, in the hope of cashing in on the housing boom. The prediction is that one in five will go bust."Some 40% of architects lost their jobs in the last recession, says Sunand Prasad, president of the Royal Institute of British Architects. "It was very hard for young architects in the early 1990s. Luckily, architecture encourages broad thinking. Many found new careers in law, academia, catering and so on. But, when the good times came again in the lead-up to the millennium, it seemed an entire generation had gone missing. It took some time to find them again."Older architects are no strangers to recession. The current slump, though, is likely to be very tough indeed. Why? Because in the past, the public sector - whether in Britain, continental Europe or the US - was able to step in when housebuilders and developers pulled in their horns. Take President Roosevelt's Tennessee Valley Authority. Between 1933 and 1944, some 16 magnificent dams with hydro-electric power stations were built along the river, giving thousands of jobs to architects, engineers and contractors, not to mention bringing irrigation, power and economic growth to the poor farming communities of seven southern states. Today, not only is the TVA the biggest energy producer in the US, its mighty structures remain tourist attractions. Closer to home, the superb architectural and engineering work accomplished by the London Passenger Transport Board, a public corporation established in 1933, proved what could be achieved when the going was tough: extensions to the tube, new stations and rolling stock. Such work was inspiring; it also created many jobs.Today, though, the public sector in Britain has increasingly been privatised. Schemes such as PFI and PPP - private finance initiative and public-private partnerships, which fund new public buildings, especially hospitals and schools, and the renovation of the London underground - have turned out to be as ill-conceived as critics said they would be a decade ago. With banks and markets floundering, public projects are feeling the squeeze, and there is certainly nothing around the corner as grand and bold as Roosevelt's awe-inspiring TVA."About three-quarters of our work is in the public sector," says John Pringle of Pringle Richards Sharratt, architects of the Millennium Galleries, Sheffield. "But, as we can't be sure what will happen to PFI and PPP, we can't rest easy. I feel for the many young practices that were hoping to design intelligent new housing. Aside from the sudden fall-off in work, they're up against new layers of bureaucracy." Pringle is referring to increasingly complex building contracts and the rocketing numbers of quangos and regeneration agencies poking their noses into the business of architecture. The simple client-architect relationship of yore - there's a building I need and I'd like you to design it - has been buried beneath jargon-laced red tape. "The bureaucracy is bloody awful," says Will Alsop. "To get jobs beyond house extensions, young architectural practices have to show satisfactory accounts for the past three or four years to prove they're a safe pair of hands. How the hell are they going to be able to do that during a recession? There wasn't any work at home when I set up in the late 1970s. We went to Germany and got some good work without anyone asking us about our finances - zilch! - or even our track record. What the Germans wanted was imaginative new architecture."In times of recession, architects may well need to follow commissions around the world. "If I tell you we've got work in 22 countries," says Norman Foster, "it's not to brag, but to underline how you can only really beat a slump - unless you're a one-man band with minimal overheads - if you have commissions spread internationally. Foster and Partners is not 100% recession-proof, but we've always been prepared to go where the work is. Today, we're also known as urban planners and product designers, so we're not hostage to sudden drops in the building market. We were lucky to win the commission to design the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank headquarters in 1979, when there was little work at home. In fact, this was about the only job in the office. So we gave it our all." This building, one of Foster's finest, opened in 1986, when the British economy was beginning to pick up. It stood Foster and his team in good stead, setting a new standard for corporate HQ. Foster has never looked back. In a curious way, the recession served him well.Yet, as Nigel Coates, professor of architecture at the Royal College of Art, tells his students: "You don't choose architecture for the money. You should only do it if you love the idea of being an architect. But I've also been saying that recession isn't altogether a bad thing. Of course, I don't want people to lose their jobs, but there's been a lot of boring and plain bad new building during the boom years - frumpitecture, I call it. Young architects are unlikely to find an interesting job, or any job, in the coming months, so it's a good time for them to study, think and dream of what a next generation of architecture might be."What might post-recession architecture be like? Alison Brooks, an architect whose practice shared the 2008 Stirling prize for the design of the much-feted Accordia housing development in Cambridge, says: "So much housing raced up in recent years has been mean and transitory. No one wants to lay down roots in homes that are pokey, fast-buck products. What's the point of building houses no one really wants just because they're low cost and meet official targets?"A new housing scheme Brooks designed at Newhall, Essex, shows what might be done. It is a fine balance of modesty and ambition, modernity and tradition. Timber-framed family houses, with generous rooms, offer a fresh take on traditional local styles. They use every square inch: roof spaces are family dens, while courtyard gardens are like outside rooms. As for energy conservation, they meet current guidelines, or even exceed them. Indeed, what we may see is a swing towards a less showy architecture, with invention squeezed into pint pots. Some of Christopher Wren's most inspired buildings, after all, were the gem-like City of London churches he built around St Paul's. Clamber up the steps of St Stephen Walbrook and, behind modest ragstone walls, you find yourself beneath a magnificent dome that might belong to one of the great baroque churches of Venice. Or visit Le Corbusier's Petit Cabanon and see how a tiny building can be highly charged. "I have a chateau on the Côte d'Azur," he wrote to a friend. "It's for my wife. It's extravagant in comfort and gentleness." It is less than four metres square. The years following the Wall Street Crash saw in "Depression deco", a sort of late-flowering art deco. While we might not see anything as distinct as that, we could yet discover a likable new modesty: offices gathered around courtyards with rooftop gardens, rather than look-at-me skyscrapers; supermarkets dug underground rather than swaggering over historic towns; schools doubling as performing arts centres. And, if the Olympic Delivery Authority cares to take up the offer of a low-cost, take-apart sports building, as suggested by Dipesh Patel, a director of Arup Associates, we may yet see the 2012 Games proving that swanky buildings are not the only way of going for gold.Still, if you happen to be an architect hooked on wildly adventurous design and are willing to travel (and work competitively), then Dubai, Abu Dhabi, India, Russia and South America beckon. In Britain, meanwhile, the recession, while painful, might spark fresh debate and instill new ideas, readying us for the next building boom when the money flows again.ArchitectureRecessionguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Money for church repairs is being lost in bureaucracy warn MPs

Taxpayers' money intended to help restore historic churches is being wasted on consultants and bureaucracy an influential group of MPs has warned.