Sharing powerful stories from seniors, caregivers and their families.

Real Minnesotans. Real Stories.

Every senior in Minnesota deserves access to the housing and care they need to remain active in their home communities as they age. The caregivers who provide this care in nursing homes and assisted living facilities likewise deserve wages that reflect the essential and skilled nature of their work.

The Long-Term Care Imperative is committed to working with caregivers, care providers, and Minnesota legislators to find policy solutions that improve accessibility to care, caregiver wages and benefits and the strength of the long-term care system in our state.

These are some of the seniors, family members and staff who are directly impacted by legislative change and support. Behind every policy and funding request to state leaders are the lives and stories of real Minnesotans — our seniors, family members and caregivers who are directly impacted by legislative decision making.

Add your voice! Contact your legislator and urge them to support additional financial support for long-term care during the 2024 legislative session.

“Being able to stay in your hometown when you need long-term care is incredibly important. It should be something that people value.”

Becci
Therapy Director

I’m an advocate for my husband, Paul, who is a 100% disabled veteran. Paul is just happy to be back in his own community. It’s so important to him, seeing people he knows and people who care about him.”

Jeanette
Family Member

“Having local care here enables me to care for those who have cared for me. They should have a right to rest and relax in a community that they have built ... I want to pay it forward.”

Ryan
Wellness Director

  • "It’s wonderful to be back here. It’s my hometown. I was a stranger over there in Foley. I begged and begged to come back to Mora ... I am here now, and I am happy."

    Reva
    Resident

  • "Where do people go if there’s not places like this? Its so important to have places like this, and there’s so many facilities within our area that have closed. We can’t afford to lose this place. We don’t want to have to ship people halfway across the country. I don’t want people to have to drive halfway across the country to see their mom."

    Sarah
    Dining Services Manager

  • "It was a priority to keep Harry here in this community because of the family history of everybody being in this area, accessibility to the farm, accessibility to dialysis. He's known in this community. He'd already been through a health crisis that made us look for a placement. And so to lessen the blow, so to say, to keep him here where he's going to know a few more people is beneficial."

    Robin
    Family Member

  • "People need somewhere to go. They need somewhere to be taking care of, and they need 24 hour care. And we have younger and younger people from the community coming here who have chronic medical conditions and can take care of themselves. So instead of driving a half hour or 45 minutes to another facility, there's not one in the area for quite a ways. So it's important for this community to have this place here."

    Jenny
    Administrator

  • "It's important to have local care here. I've been here all of my life. My dad graduated here, I graduated here, my kids graduated here. And having local care here enables me the privilege to care for those who have cared for me. You know, they have cared for us. So we were kind of getting our turn to, like, pay it forward."

    Ryan
    Wellness Director

  • "It’s really hard to recruit and retain good people. I know that there’s people who would love to be a caregiver but they can’t afford to raise a family. They can go down the street and work on a hog farm or at McDonalds or Walmart and receive higher wages. Residents not being able to have consistent caregivers just because people can’t afford to raise their families is a big deal."

    Candas
    Administrator

  • "I like working in nursing home over any other health care place because you get on a more personal level with residents. You're there when they're at their worst or they're having behaviors or they're sick. But you're also they're when they're getting better and you were able to be a part of that and keeping them strong, keeping them going."

    Erica
    Registered Nurse

  • "It makes me really sad thinking about towns that don't have a long term care facility in it. It means that older folks needing long-term care would have to go several miles away for care, and that would mean those people could not be a part of their kids, their grandkids and great grandkids live. Because the resident, they don't necessarily have the stamina to make that drive."

    Becci
    Therapy Director

  • "This community has been my home for 65 years. My house is 13 miles away on Highway 65 north. I wasn’t looking for care, but I fell down and hit my head. The kids took care of it. On the weekend I can leave and visit my kids and grandkids. And they can visit me here too."

    Harry
    Resident

  • "It’s important for [elected officials] to invest in facilities like this so that people are able to have a good, warm spot to be in and get help. It really helps because if I had to pay for a facility like this out of my own pocket, I couldn’t do it. "

    Nancy
    Resident

  • "A lot of us have kids and families at home. So sometimes it's hard with holidays and weekends missing out on family time or kids growing up so we can be here and take care of people. It would mean a lot to have higher wages because employees and staff would feel appreciated."

    JJ
    Registered Nurse

  • "I’m an advocate for my husband, Paul, who is a 100% disabled veteran. It took us 3.5 years to get home to our own community. I can tell the difference in my husband’s mental and physical being because he is home. Paul is just happy to be back in his own community. It’s so important to him, seeing people he knows and people who care about him."

    Jeanette
    Family Member