Out-Of-Pocket Activity Supply Survey

With many schools now back in session, I’m hearing a lot about teachers buying supplies for their classrooms with their own money.  I recently read an article reporting that the average teacher in the U.S. spends around $479 per year on supplies for which they aren’t reimbursed.

A couple of days ago, I heard this topic discussed on an early morning news program. One of the reporters made an interesting comment. He said that teaching is the only profession where people need to pay out-of-pocket for supplies used by the people whom they serve.

Here’s my concern

I deeply respect teachers, and I feel that more needs to be done to find other sources to cover classroom expenses. However, I must disagree with this reporter’s statement.

I know of at least one other profession where caring people pay out-of-pocket for supplies used by the people whom they serve. Those people are the activity professionals in nursing homes and other senior living communities.

Many nursing homes provide excellent funding for their activity departments. On the other hand, I often hear from activity professionals who tell me they frequently pay for supplies out of their own pockets because their budgets are so small.

With the further tightening of nursing home funding, I fear this will become increasingly common. As a result, I believe the public needs to know about this situation.

We need to work together to provide adequate activity budgets. This will allow us to offer activities that help provide our residents with the best quality of life possible.

How you can help

I put together a survey to help us get a better picture of this situation. If you are an activity professional in a senior living community, I ask you to please fill it out. The survey is confidential, and I will share the overall results in a later post. Depending on the results, I also hope to share it with the media.

Do you know other activity professionals who perhaps don’t read my blog? Please share this post and ask them to fill out the survey, too. The more responses I receive, the more informative the results will be.

The survey is now closed. Thank you so much for your participation!