When it comes to the basics of managing one’s life — including things like accessing healthcare, managing one’s finances, dealing with various bureaucracies, and the myriad other things we must do on a daily/weekly/monthly basis — getting older can make everything that much more difficult.
Regardless of gender, race, or income, getting older imposes various limitations, from physical and mental deterioration, to isolation, and to dealing with a world that’s increasingly complex and often navigated through technology. These challenges impact not only the aging and their families. They are are societal human rights issue.
Divided Responsibility
A variety of national governmental offices will help any resident who falls victim to scams, frauds, and oversights. But unlike a number of small, relatively well off countries, the U.S. does not have a systematic way of helping seniors who are in distress.
In fact, many states, counties, and cities lack publicly funded advice bureaus dedicated to supporting seniors. Getting help in person almost always involves traveling to an ever-decreasing number of offices. And getting help on the phone or online often involves navigating systems that are either intentionally or inadvertently frustrating.
At the Lower End
Another difficulty, especially with the less well off, is that officers of the law are frequently the first (and often the only) ones sent to deal with the distressed seniors. Those in trouble range from wanderers on the street in their pajamas to victims of intentional physical abuse.
Often, all the police can do is call an often overworked and underfunded social service agency for help. The worst is a quick fix. A ride home for the wanderer. A stern lecture, if the officers of the law can manage to find the abuser.
At the Upper End
On the other end of the financial scale, seniors are the major profit source for the nursing home industry. Not all the places give value for the money. Some nursing home owners intentionally maximize profit by providing substandard care. Underpaid and poorly vetted employees rarely make conscientious care-givers.
The frequent advertisements by lawyers specializing in cases against nursing homes gives an indication of how widespread the problem has become.
Privatization
Private, non-profit groups try to fill in the rather large gaps in the senior support network. The best known nationally is AARP. Other smaller, promising local organizations have sprung up. Seniors in Distress in Broward County, Florida is a good example.
The Community
In many people’s minds, the state of Florida and the retirement community are synonymous. Broward county defies the Florida stereotypes on both ends of the age spectrum. Its largest community, Fort Lauderdale, has long had the reputation as the place high school and college students go for Spring break.
As it turns out, around 17% of just under two million of the county’s permanent residents are seniors, almost exactly the national average. That means a significant number of younger people are a potential source of help.
The Beginnings
For Seniors in Distress, that help started with a single encounter. The group’s founder got to know an elderly neighbor. She sometimes helped this veteran and a widower with everyday chores and noticed how he quietly struggled with keeping things together.
Among other concerns, she noticed medicines prescribed by a variety of doctors and confusion about taking them. It became clear the doctors involved had no reference to each other.
This situation prompted the neighbor to become a combination coordinator and advocate, someone who could sort out this senior’s rather confused life. From this single incident, Seniors in Distress started to gradually add others willing to help others.
The Organization
Following the model used with that first “client,” Seniors in Distress assigns a trained, volunteer advocate to each person they help. The advocate then figures out what actions will improve the situation. This can mean contacting a wide range of people, organizations, and agencies.
Seniors having medical problems may not only need the help of doctors and nurses. They may also need help with insurance companies, Medicare and Medicaid. This might require helping the senior learn to use a messaging app on a cell telephone. Or, it could mean teaching the senior the basics of how to use a cell phone. The advocate could also need to find transportation for medical appointments.
Of course, the non-medical problems require the same sort of coordination. Over and above directly helping the clients, the staff of Seniors in Distress need to keep track of assignments and their outcomes. And raise money.
Limitations
The manageable size of Broward County and its pool of local people willing and able to help makes success possible. On the other hand, getting a non-profit up and running in cities the size Atlanta or Chicago requires coordinating a wide variety of bureaucratic government agencies. That presents something of a challenge, to put it no stronger than that.
Implementing the Model Elsewhere
For some time the establishment of a governmental agency devoted to helping seniors navigate their problems in the modern world is at best a remote possibility. Using the Seniors in Distress model of local non-profits operating in urban areas with manageable and diverse populations has the most promise.
That said, it’s good to keep in mind that only in feel-good fiction do things worth doing get done overnight.
Realistically, even using the Seniors in Distress model, the baseline requirements — creating an organization, funding it and staffing it with competent people — could well take these three coming years and more.
It’s here that the old saying about long journeys and single steps fits in nicely: Whatever the timeline, the need is there.
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