The census held in the year 2000 shows that Any County stands second in terms of population in the state, after That County. Approximately 750,000 people are living in Any County, off which around 15.2 percent (114,000 people) are older adults (people of the age 60 or above). This number of older adults in Any County has increased significantly has increased between the years 1995-2005. The increase was greater than the one at State or National level. In total, 21.7 percent increase in the older adult population was recorded.
Out of the total older adult population of Any County, 39.8 percent live in the cities of Valley Vista, Some City, Hill Viejo, and Grove Beach. According to a report by Any County’s Aging Task Force 2003, the population of older adults in these four cities is increasing considerably. It has doubled since the year 2000 and is expected to double again in the next two decades. The report further states that the reason of the increasing number of older adults population of these four cities of Any County is the lower rents in these areas, as compared to the rest of the county. The increase in population calls for better, and more available, senior citizens care services throughout the whole county. The need for such quality services is even greater in the four cities mentioned above, so that the senior citizens can have a better access to quality services in those areas, without any problem.
Since the older adult population is increasing significantly, and the need for senior care services is great, one might assume that there will be adequate services available to cater the needs of senior citizens, but this is not the case. While there are some private services that provide quality standard services for the citizens, but they charge a high fee for their services. However, the senior citizens in these areas cannot support the high fees for the services. Their economic condition does not allow this. This is shown by the fact that more and more seniors are moving in these areas because of the lower rents in these cities, as compared to the other parts of Any County. Statistics also reinforce this observation as the survey done by Interagency Committee on Aging (ICA) in 2003 shows that more than half of the senior citizens, in one of the cities mentioned above, reported to have income below the poverty line. With so many people in their senior years, living below the poverty level, the need for proper, comfortable, cheap, and easily accessible senior day care center is great. In fact, there should be numerous care centers for the senior citizens, especially in those areas where the population of senior citizens is denser than the others. Such services help the senior citizens in making their life easier, as they are in great need of support in their late years.
In Any County, senior people are not inclined towards using the senior center services due to the high costs of the services. According to a survey by Any County Long-Term Multilingual Senior Needs Assessment held in 2005, only a small percentage (3.9 percent) of the Spanish-speaking senior citizens use the senior centre regulatory in the whole year. More than 90 percent of the surveyed seniors from the community said that they rely on their spouse or other family members for the support. The percentage of Spanish-speaking older adults using the services for senior citizens is much smaller than seniors from Caucasian community, among which 58 percent people are using the services.
Furthermore, the survey states that more than 72 percent surveyed people belonging to older adult population of Spanish-speaking community were not even aware of any such service - whether with fee or without - in the area. This clearly shows that the senior citizens are severely in need of such services and their need is much neglected in the whole Any County. In the follow-up question of the survey, the surveyed senior citizens were asked whether or not they would be interested to avail a service for the older adults. More than 55 percent of the respondents said that they will use the service if language was not the barrier and the environment was welcoming for them.
In order to fill the gap of lack of health, social and recreational services senior citizens, The Some City Senior Center is providing a quality services in these four cities to help the senior population. Our center also provides learning and growing environment. In our older adults care center, we strive hard to meet the standards required by the old age of our customers and try to live up to their expectations. We provide our customers with a homely environment with all the basic and most of the luxurious facilities to make our clients’ experience worthwhile. We strive hard for their comfort and try to give them, the time of their life. From medical facilities to providing quality food, we, at our organization, take care of the senior citizens under our care like our own.
Our organization is dedicated to help the older adults of Any County in maintaining an independent healthy lifestyle to increase the quality of standard of their life. We are the largest senior citizen care center in Any County, serving a big part of older adult population of the County. According to our recent in-member survey, we have overall overwhelming level of satisfaction rate of 92 percent. We are serving the older adults through our on-site daily meal service, health screenings, physical activities, recreation and leisure programs, disease management, social activities.
As an organization, we know that this is still far from enough. The need of the area we are catering to is much higher than what we are offering. We want to respond appropriately to the need of our county. We want to successfully meet the community’s standards. We believe that the need for this pilot project is evident, from the above discussion.
If provided with grants, we will expand our facility to address the needs of the ever increasing older adults’ population of the four cities we are catering to. We will put our efforts to make the facilities of life more available to the senior citizens and reach out to them to let them be aware of such facilities. As shown by the results of follow up question of the survey, many senior citizens are not even aware that such services exist in their area. So we would try to reach out to more and more senior citizens, so they can avail the facilities we provide to make their years more comfortable.
References
O'Neal-McElrath, Tori, and Mim Carlson. Winning Grants Step By Step. 1st ed. 2008. Print.
