GRAND FORKS — As social workers gathered recently to celebrate Meredith Baumann’s retirement from Valley Senior Living, Shannon Holte, told Meredith Baumann that the card she bought was not large enough.
“I told her I couldn’t even write in the card what she meant to me, because how can I put into words everything I’ve learned from her?” said Holte, director of social services at Woodside Village, a skilled nursing unit with Valley Senior Living.
“She totally is my mentor. I would have never stayed in long-term care this long if not for Meredith,” Holte said. “I don’t think I could have ever been as prepared for doing this work if I hadn’t first trained under her as a social work intern from UND.”
Baumann, who grew up in Edmore, North Dakota, graduated high school there in 1972 and went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in social work at UND, has influenced many social work students and impacted countless lives during her 45-year career with Valley Senior Living.
She started her social work career in 1976 at the former Valley Memorial Home on Almonte Avenue, which operated until the Flood of 1997, she said.
ADVERTISEMENT
As the fifth of six siblings, Baumann was influenced to go into social work, in part, by two of her brothers who pursued that degree at UND. The desire to help people has always been a priority, she said.
“It seemed like the right thing to do. They were helping people, and that’s what I knew I wanted. I was always the helper of folks; I was always supporting people.”
When Baumann began her career, recent changes in federal regulations required the employment of a social worker in nursing home facilities with 120 or more residents. Valley Memorial Home met that criteria. She applied for the job at Valley Memorial Home and was hired.
“And so I was the first,” she said. “Nobody knew what a social worker in the nursing home did. So it was kind of like, ‘well, whatever we think, we’re going to have you do.’ ”
“I knew nothing, absolutely nothing about the care of elders,” she said, with a chuckle, so she ordered and read books from the state library “and that’s how I knew about elders, so most of it was on-the-job training. I learned as I went.”
In recent years, she has been overseeing five social workers who work at Valley Senior Living on Columbia, one of several organizational campuses.
“It’s hard to say what we do because it’s everything,” she said. “If you don’t know what to do you call social work.”
Their duties include helping someone adjust to living in a nursing home, helping them resolve any concerns, advocating on their behalf, and coordinating the discharge of residents who move out.
ADVERTISEMENT
Social workers are “trained to see the wholistic part of the person, which means not just their person, but their whole environment — the family, the visitors, the relatives, their friends, anything that affects the residents we need to analyze to see how it’s helping or affecting the person who’s here.”
‘Tremendous’ change
Over the past few decades, there has been “tremendous” changes in laws and regulations concerning elder care in long-term facilities, and Baumann and her social work colleagues have worked on policies in response to those changes.
“When I first started everything was medical-based — almost like a hospital — it was, pretty much, we the staff can tell you the resident what you’re going to do and how long and how often,” she said. “It has changed to an almost about face where the resident needs to be the one to direct their own care and desires and likes, and then we try to adapt to what we can do.
“There are still parameters for what we can do and what we can’t in a nursing home, but that’s a big change.”
Baumann, an Eden Alternative educator, said the Eden Alternative, which is meant to improve nursing home care, “is a guiding force for us in changing how we do things.”
The Eden Alternative approach emphasizes that nursing home residents have not lost any of their rights “or their ability to say I like this or I like that, but have merely changed their address.”
Influence on colleagues
Baumann has made a lasting impression on her fellow social workers and other co-workers.
“She has meant more to me than anyone I’ve ever worked with, or ever will again,” said Holte, who just celebrated her 34th year of employment with Valley Senior Living.
ADVERTISEMENT
“As colleagues, we’ve always conferred, we’ve written policies together. We’ve seen and done it all — from evacuating patients during the flood, we thought that was bad enough, and then to know there’s this global pandemic that’s still going on,” Holte said. “I mean, If you can’t weather that storm in long-term care, I guess you don’t belong.”
During her career, Holte has experienced moments of doubt.
“In social work, everyone has those tough days, where you work with kind of difficult families or difficult situations,” Holte said, “and I just thought, is this really what I want to do? And she was always there to coach me and offer advice and help me along the way, so here I am all these years later.”
Baumann’s advice and counsel has been invaluable.
“She taught me to look at the big picture; you don’t have to always react,” Holte said. “You’ve just got to kind of take things in and analyze it a little bit before you just react and do. And that’s really served me well. …
“Sometimes you’ve got to look back and look at the greater good, what does the resident need, and that’s always the direction you want to go. Because we’re here for the residents; they have rights; we need to do good by them, that’s really the point of everybody being here, to be here for the residents.”
“I still can’t believe she’s leaving,” Holte said. “It’s like the guru is gone. She’s like a staple. It’s like, ‘If you’ve got a problem, you go to Meredith.’”
Special Olympics
For the past 25 years or so, Meredith and Tim Baumann have been active in the Special Olympics. They are regional directors for the organization and parents of a daughter, Erin, who was born with Down Syndrome.
“We have learned so much from Erin in perseverance and joy of living,” Meredith said.
Kathy Meagher, who recently retired as director of North Dakota Special Olympics, said, “Meredith has a lot of passion to make things better for people with intellectual disabilities. … She is certainly one of the greatest advocates for families with children who have intellectual disabilities.”
Baumann’s impact extends “not only to the Special Olympics program, but to the people of the community,” Meagher said. “She has good leadership qualities and she uses those leadership skills in a non-threatening manner. She adapts her skills to various audiences, including business leaders, coaches, athletes and (others).”
Baumann is a champion for expanding opportunities for those children to participate and active in “insisting that those opportunities are available to them,” Meagher said.
“She’s a good trainer and teacher,” Meagher said. “She brings humor in the face of adversity and negativity,” which she transforms into positive experiences.
Important leadership
As Baumann transitions into retirement from Valley Senior Living, Garth Rydland, the president and CEO who has worked with her since 1996, said, “Meredith is a champion for improving the quality of life for residents at Valley Senior Living.
“It’s difficult to put into words all that Meredith has accomplished over the years in a variety of important leadership roles. Her recent work has been some of the most important in her career as a leader in guiding our organization to meet our mission of providing compassionate Christian care through our values of excellence, trust, teamwork, empowerment and community,” Rydland said.
“We have been so fortunate to have her in our organization through her career. She is an inspiration to me in compassion and caring. We are lucky to continue to work with her in retirement as she will continue as a trainer for our corporate culture.”
During her career, Baumann has received several honors including being named the Long-term Care Social Worker of the Year and Distinguished Alumni of UND Social Work Department.
As she retires this week, Baumann said, “The hardest thing is to leave the people that live here. It’s going to be hard to not come in and see the smiles, the greetings, see people who know my name, know who I am. So, the most satisfying for me is when I can have direct interaction with those who live here rather than just paperwork on the computer. That’s the most gratifying.
“I have been very very privileged over my time to be with people on their end of life journey, so as they are dying to be able to be with the person and the family, that is also a great honor.”
As Baumann looks back at the reasons she stayed with the organization for more than 45 years, she said, “There have always been challenges, but there’s never been a day that I didn’t look forward to what was going to happen the next week, the next month, the next year.”
“Simply put, I truly believe in the mission of Valley,” she said. “I identify so strongly with what we do here that I never wanted to be anywhere else. I was always so very proud of what we did and what I did, I never thought of it.”
