Bleak outlook for senior services
Testimony invited on Four-Year Area Plan for Aging Services
In the next four years, increasing needs among Philadelphia’s elderly combined with steadily decreasing funding will produce devastating results, predicts Philadelphia Corporation for Aging (PCA) President Rodney D. Williams.
“The safety net that Pennsylvania’s seniors need and deserve is being shredded,” Williams said, “in part by neglect and funding shortfalls, and in part by policy decisions which jeopardize our ability to serve them most effectively.”
This assessment coincides with PCA's preparation of its four-year
Area Plan for Aging Services, which is required by the Pennsylvania Department of Aging.
“Philadelphia’s senior population is steadily growing older, frailer, poorer and increasingly minority and limited-English-speaking,” Williams said. “Our city’s seniors experience poverty at a rate almost double that of Pennsylvania and the nation. More than 117,000 of them have trouble paying for one of life’s basic necessities; 23,000 report skipping a meal for lack of money.
"Despite that, the state has not increased funding for aging services from the Pennsylvania Lottery for the past six years -- when, in fact, Lottery revenues are growing, and there is a significant surplus,” he said.
Already, continued flat funding has contributed to closing of five senior centers and six satellite meal sites, Williams said ; reducing the number of seniors served from 33,000 to 20,000. The Options program for in-home care has a waiting list of more than 1,000 people.
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