Little Rock - Arkansas I remember during high school visiting my grandmother Violet Adelman in a nursing home near our house after my grandfather died. As far as I can tell she didn’t recognize me and her skinny body seemed to mold to the bed. It was entirely too sad for me. What I didn’t understand until my brother Jeff started working on this project was how vulnerable elderly people in nursing homes actually are. Many are dependent on total strangers to care for them at a time in their lives when they can no longer care for themselves. This fact took hold once I visited with the men and women who are fighting for better and more dignified care for their family members who reside in nursing homes in Arkansas and Little Rock. It was Jeff’s dedication to these people that made me understand what’s going. Jeff Kelly Lowenstein has done a year long national investigation into nursing home staffing, racial disparities and government backed mortgages. Lisa Sanders has been an uncompromising advocate for her mother Edna Irvin (pictured here) ever since she decided to move her mother to Little Rock from Magnolia, Arkansas in early 2012. A nurse’s aide for about 30 years, Irvin won awards for perfect attendance, her daughter, and often would go to work with aching knees because she felt that someone always had it worse than her, her daughter said. In September 2014 Sanders a lawsuit against the Sandalwood Healthcare nursing home alleging that her mother had received substandard care there. A lawyer for the company that owns the nursing home said the facility will vigorously defend itself. A majority-black facility, Sandalwood had one of the lowest listed levels of registered nurse staffing in the country in 2012, according to government website Nursing Home Compare. Daily staffing levels of registered nurse in facilities where the majority of residents were black or Latino were significantly lower than those in nursing homes where the majority of residents were white, a Center for Public Integrity analysis found. Neither the residents’ poverty nor their entering level of sickness fully explained explained the difference. Photo by @jonlowenstein by everydayusa

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