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For senior citizens who are shutins and meet financial eligibility criteria, meals are delivered.
Community Service vans carry the elderly to the nutrition centers and bring the meals to the homebound. The vans run regular routes to towns, enabling senior citizens to do their grocery shopping and laundry, fill prescriptions and make doctor appointments. They also take patients for kidney dialysis treatments in Warrenton. In addition, CSC Transit provides transportation from Culpeper to Charlottesville’s medical complex two days a week, charging a modest $5 for the round trip. The mileage accumulates rapidly; the 26 vehicles on 46 van routes log more than 500,000 miles per year.
With a dual purpose, the homemaker/home health aide program employs able-bodied seniors to work in the homes of the elderly who do not qualify for other public in-home care or who cannot afford a private service. This service is provided to people who would otherwise have to enter a nursing home, almost always at public expense.
“Leaving aside the tremendous difference in quality of life, it just makes good economic sense to provide a home health aide and home delivered meals if that will enable an elderly man or woman to stay at home,” said Mrs. Gorman. Institutionalization costs the taxpayers $28,000 to $35,000, compared to about $1,000 annually per customer for home delivered meals five days a week and the services of a home health aide.
23733701Other services provided by the center include:
• Advocacy to assist seniors in applying and receiving government programs and benefits.
• Winterization of homes for the low income elderly.
• Assistance in job counseling, training and placement to those 55 and older.
Community Services also operates the Shadow Lawn Senior Center in Fauquier, providing a place for seniors to gather for meetings, community activities, congregate meals and socializing.
In addition, the agency administers the Retired Senior Volunteer Program, which recruits able-bodied seniors and younger volunteers to help not only in Community Services but in other agencies in the five counties. This national effort, a favorite of First Lady Nancy Reagan, often falls in the “make-work” category in other planning districts where Community Services staff must search for jobs to assign the volunteers, Mrs. Gorman said. “Here it’s vital.”
Primarily because of the transportation vans, the aging programs have a high visibility, and because it is generally known that many of the services to the elderly carry no financial eligibility requirement, this component of Community Services attracts a lot of criticism, Mrs. Gorman noted. “But people should know that the average income of the seniors we’re serving is $2,000
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