ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, January 4, 1996 TAG: 9601040003
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By MATT CHITTUM STAFF WRITER
While nursing homes in New York and California are making sex a matter of policy, around Roanoke it seems intimacy among the elderly is just no big deal.
At Friendship Manor and Richfield, two of the largest homes in the area, there are no specific policies regarding the right of residents to have sex. At both, it's regarded as simply an element of privacy that's protected under their respective privacy policies.
``This is their home, and we try to make it their home in every fashion,'' said Ken Srpan, retirement services director for Friendship Manor. Under Friendship Manor's Resident Rights Bill, everyone living at the home is guaranteed privacy in personal visits and mail. Having the chance for intimacy can lend a sense of normalcy and dignity to residents' lives, Srpan said, and that's important.
Tommy East, administrator of Richfield in Salem, said in Virginia it's a matter of state and federal guidelines that ensure the personal privacy of nursing home residents.
East and Srpan agree that it becomes a sensitive issue when the residents' ability to make these decisions is in question. In the Hebrew Home for the Aged in New York, for instance, even some Alzheimer's disease patients are permitted to be sexually intimate.
``We're not about to make decisions on that without consulting everyone involved,'' Srpan said. That usually means consulting the families of the residents.
The Hebrew Home's policy even accounts for the residents' right to obtain pornography, but that's no big deal around here either.
``If they want to subscribe to Sports Illustrated or Playboy,'' East said, ``that's up to them.'' It may become a problem between a resident and his family, but that's another matter. If a resident's son or daughter finds a pornographic magazine in a resident's dresser drawer at Richfield, that's the same as finding it in a dresser drawer at home.
But sex has not been a problem at either home. Relationships start there like anywhere else. Both homes boast numerous marriages, in fact.
``I think it all boils down to the quality of life we are all concerned with providing," East said. "We're trying to make this a place where each person's dignity is respected. If this is something that meets their needs, then we will not stand in the way of it.''
LENGTH: Short : 49 linesby CNB