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The Aging Futures Partnership

Address
		care of the Broome County Office for Aging
		PO Box 1766
		44 Hawley Street
		Binghamton, New York
		13902
Web site
		www.gobroomecounty.com/agingfutures/
Contact
		Dee Dee Camp
		607.778.2064

The Partnership is based on a 14-year-old collaboration of older adults, interested citizens and organizations serving older adults. Members include representatives of government, hospitals, home care, mental health providers, nursing homes, educational institutions, advocacy groups, policymakers and social service organizations. The Partnership operates from the premise that “older adults and their caregivers should be the primary sources of information about their needs.”

Successes:

Return to Home Caregiver Project – Following the hospital discharge of an older adult, the program offers caregivers three months of telephone support and education to reduce their burden and increase their confidence. At the start of the program, 73% of caregivers reported stress, a figure that dropped to 43% by the end of the program. More than 82% also said that their care recipient was at risk of nursing home placement if services could not be provided at home.
Men Making Meals Course and Cookbook – A cooking instruction course was developed for older men living alone, which participant Don McElwain, wrote about in a follow-up book, A Pinch of Memory, a Dash of Love. Mr. McElwain promoted his book and the course on the Today Show and in the Wall Street Journal.
Strike Out Stroke Program promoted better self management of chronic hypertension by older adults to prevent strokes; in the first six months, it resulted in an 11% drop in the systolic blood pressure of all 93 participants.
Developed a mental health program called SMILE (Senior Mood Improvement through Lifestyle and Education) to help local providers think about how to serve older adults. The Partnership has been working to get the message out that “depression is NOT a normal part of aging” and to increase identification of and services for seniors with depression.

Real Life Impact:

The Partnership presented at the Southern Tier Home Builders Association Home Show in March 2007 with a booth on “There’s No Place Like Home - Homes for a Lifetime”. Seminars were offered showing how universal design and energy efficient building products make homes more livable, enabling people to remain independent in their home as they age. A consumer survey revealed that though a high percentage of people over 60 were planning to renovate their homes in the near future, very few knew much about universal design. Also, new non-traditional partners are engaging over creating a more livable community. The Partnership conducted training for 24 planning boards in the region re: universal design and how it is important to create homes and communities for a lifetime. A local assembly woman linked regional economic development leaders, home builders, and planning staff to members of the Partnership, to think together about livable communities, transportation, and housing design.

We encourage the reproduction of this material and ask that you credit Community Partnerships for Older Adults Community Partnerships for Older Adults is a national program of The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation within the University of Southern Maine
© 2007 Community Partnerships for Older Adults

Strategic Planning - Strategic planning will help you create a bold vision for the future, strengthen new partnerships, forge creative and innovative linkages between stakeholders, and ultimately better address the needs of older adults in your community. A community-wide strategic planning process will benefit from the wisdom of a diverse array of participants and ensure greater likelihood of success.

Inclusion & Diversity - Including older adults and caregivers is crucial to growing and sustaining successful community partnerships. It is especially important to seek participation from traditionally excluded groups such as those defined by race and ethnicity, low income, lack of English language proficiency, and sexual orientation. While many factors can challenge a partnership’s efforts to embrace diversity and build productive relationships, receiving input from a broad array of community members helps to ensure equality in decision making and leads to long term care and supportive services that are more responsive to a community’s diverse needs.

Fiscal Strategies - Developing a fiscal strategy is an important and challenging part of improving the system of long term care and supportive services for older adults in your community. The array of funding options requires that community partnerships be strategic in their aims. This area of the Resource Center reviews relevant funding sources and provides resources to help you make the most of them.

Communications - Have you ever thought about how many times a day someone tries to influence you to think a certain way, to buy a certain product, to support a cause or to change your behavior? These days there are so many ways to reach you—from cell phones and Palm Pilots to instant messaging, cable TV and customized publications—that a reasonable reaction is to simply tune everything out. It’s a world of sound and fury.

Evaluation - While the success of a community partnership may seem self-evident, a systematic evaluation holds members to a higher standard, revealing more than what we see with the naked eye. This section offers an introduction to evaluation. It covers the basic principles of evaluation design and implementation, as well as some topics likely to be important for community partnerships working to improve long term care and supportive services.

Partnership Evolution - A partnership generally consists of multiple organizations and individuals working together under a common vision. Who will be in the partnership varies from community to community, yet the purpose is universal: to create a mutually beneficial and well-defined relationship to sustain results that are not possible alone.