Lifestyle

In my last article, I touched briefly on holding family meetings. As I mentioned, I often encourage caregivers to hold a family meeting to increase communication and to let their families help them bridge gaps and find solutions. Yet, as my last article explained, sometimes the caregiver themselves are not able to see that there are needs and concerns. Sometimes family members, neighbors, friends, etc. of the caregivers need to initiate that action.

Matt VanGorp and Nolan Jasperson were awarded Montevideo 2021 Building Awards program certificate for Best Residential Renovation. Photo by Jessica Stolen-Jacobson Jeff and Joan Drexler were awarded for Best New Residential Development in 2021 by the Montevideo City Council.

When it comes to action and change, people are generally in one of two corners; 1. Things are moving too slow or 2. Things are moving too fast. Why is that? I don’t have the answer to that question, however I would offer up that sometimes both are right and sometimes both are wrong. Moving too fast without a plan can be reckless and create bigger issues than what the change was intended to fix. On the other hand, moving too slowly simply to move slowly can contribute to complacency and “that’s the way it’s always been” thinking. At Montevideo Public Schools we don’t want to fall into either of these categories, therefore we have and continue to examine ourselves and our practices in order to determine if what we are doing are getting the right results in the areas most important for the education of our students and to meet the expectations of our community.

When Sarah Vonderharr, of Montevideo, was in grad school, she was introduced to some strategies to promote nurturing environments in the classroom. It was those teachings that inspired her to apply the lessons to her work now in substance use prevention as a Prevention Specialist for PACT for Families in Yellow Medicine County. The organization works on the prevention of substance use in youth within the counties of Renville, Kandiyohi, and Yellow Medicine County under a Partnership for Success Grant.

Montevideo Middle School Students of the Month are (Front Row, L-R): Payton Howell, Addison Reszel, Guillermo Soto, Carlos Villatoro Avelar. (Back Row L-R): Tori Johnson, Kyla Moravetz, Lillianna Longhenry, Oliver Enevoldsen, Link Fromm. Not Pictured: Brittney Quintanilla and Natalie Koopmeiners. Photo Submitted

March is Women’s History Month. Women have made a huge impact on policies and understanding of Domestic Abuse. One group we want to recognize would be the Women from the Duluth Model. The Duluth Model helped to change the way community members think of domestic violence. This model is an inter-agency approach that brings justice, human service, and community interventions together around the primary goal of protecting victims from ongoing abuse. The Duluth Model was started in 1980-1981. Eleven community agencies (police, prosecutors, probation, mental health agencies, as well as others) took part in this experiment. The goal of this experiment was to bring criminal, civil justice, and community agencies together to work in an interrelated way to respond to domestic abuse cases. The Duluth Model was developed by a small group of activists. “The Domestic Abuse Intervention Project (DAIP) began in a small, upstairs kitchen of the Duluth Community Health Center in Duluth. Three people were employed to coordinate the project, provide services to victims and offenders, and negotiate policies and procedures with community agencies.” The main emphasis and goals of this were to establish better communication between community partners as well as provide intervention in domestic abuse cases. There are many groundbreaking changes in domestic abuse policies that are shown in the Duluth Model history. In 1981, Duluth police issued a “mandatory arrest policy”. This policy would require that perpetrators of domestic abuse must be arrested in the event of an assault. In 1982, DAIP consulted with Range Women Advocates to help adopt this model in rural northern Minnesota communities. In 1983, the Power & Control Wheel was developed by neighborhood women who had experienced domestic abuse. In 1989, The Duluth police departments adopted a new policy that eliminates arrests in self-defense cases and develops a new training curriculum that was called Law Enforcement Response to Domestic Assaults. This provided ongoing training of law enforcement officers. Changes are still being implemented today. In 2017, DAIP completed the Blueprint for Safety Demonstration Project funded by the Office on Violence Against Women. The project was a five-year organizing effort. The project updated existing domestic violence policy and protocols as well as a method of analyzing and distributing risk information and improved the way in which policies across the criminal system worked together to provide improved safety for victims and accountability for offenders.

The Alzheimer’s Association statistics about memory loss in Minnesota shed some light on its prevalence. They are from the 2021 report at alz.org/ facts. The number of people aged 65+ with Alzheimer’s is projected to be 120,000 by 2025 which is an increase of 21.2% from 2020. Last year, there were 170,000 people providing 155,000,000 hours of unpaid care. Dementia caregivers today are providing 20% more care than in 2009. Whether it is you, a loved one, a customer or neighbor, memory loss is something that touches everyone in our communities, and I would like to share some of the resources available.

Anderson-TeBeest Funeral Home owners Kevin and Judy TeBeest both grew up in Montevideo, purchasing the funeral home in Montevideo in 2012. The history of the funeral home began in 1908, when the Anderson Funeral Home was first established in South Dakota by brothers John and Joseph Anderson. The brothers moved to Montevideo in 1912, along with their business. When Kevin and Judy purchased the business in 2012, the name was changed to Anderson-TeBeest Funeral Home.