Marin County is quietly playing host to the state’s fastest growing aging adult population, and nonprofit organizations like West Marin Senior Services are calling for more volunteers to help fill the gaps in elder care.
According to the 2010 census, 27 percent of Marin’s population is over the age of 60, and several studies estimate this number will rise to over 33 percent by 2030. West Marin Senior Services faces the challenge of caring for a greater number of seniors, and doing so over a much wider and more remote area than the rest of the county—what the nonprofit’s staff are calling “a rural curtain.”
“It’s like the old Cold War Iron Curtain of Soviet Russia,” said Skip Schwartz, the nonprofit’s executive director, “except for us it means being out here in the country. Part of our mission is to help people live safely and with dignity for as long as they can at home, if that’s what they want to do. And that’s more challenging in a rural area than an urban area.”
The agency oversees 300 clients who need specialized care under the supervision of case managers, runs meals-on-wheels and shuttle shopping services for hundreds more and operates Stockstill House, an assisted-living facility in Point Reyes Station. It does not have enough staff to visit all of its clients, many of whom are spread out over long distances.
Instead, the group depends on volunteers—and it’s currently in a desperate search for more.
“Volunteers multiply our paid staff tenfold,” Mr. Schwartz said. “Imagine if we had to have paid staff to drive our clients everywhere. That would be impossible.”
Federal cuts to services
In the wake of the 2008 recession, federal dollars for senior services allocated through the Older Americans Act—which funds senior services at the state level and establishes the framework for county-specific programs—were reduced by 7 percent from the state budget. Counties like Marin were suddenly forced to reevaluate how their governments can manage a rapidly growing aging population while revenue for state and local senior service programs stalled.
“The capacity of the aging services community has fallen pretty severely over the past seven years,” said Richard Browdie, the president and C.E.O. of the Cleveland-based Benjamin Rose Institute on Aging. “Except for nutrition, aging services have dropped faster and further than other services at the federal level when it came to the downturn in contributions. Most states cut aging services programs as their budgets shrank. And counties are experiencing the same thing as states.”
As mandated by the Older Americans Act, each county in every state has an Area Agency on Aging, entities charged with outlining the infrastructure for how senior services will be supported locally. In Marin, Aging and Adult Services represents the Area Agency on Aging and is a branch of Health and Human Services.
County officials said the recession indeed contributed to the struggles afflicting local senior services providers. “We came out of a deep and dark period of recession, where there were cutbacks at every level,” said Lee Pullen, a program manager for Aging and Adult Services. “Some of it’s getting restored, but we’re not quite back to where we were. But we’re getting closer to stability, and at the county here we’re addressing our current needs.”
In June, Aging and Adult Services came under fire when a Marin County civil grand jury report criticized officials for failing to have long-term goals in place for responding to Marin’s increasing senior population. The report prompted the Board of Supervisors to dedicate $100,000 to Aging and Adult Services to draft and execute a plan known as the Aging Action Initiative.
Under the initiative, a series of community-led working groups—of which several West Marin Senior Services staff are members—will work through March 2015 to address a variety of current service deficiencies, including dementia treatment, nutrition assistance and care coordination. The goal, Mr. Pullen said, is to devise a comprehensive, long-term solution to senior services shortfalls by placing more emphasis on in-home senior care as opposed to assisted living.
“The question now is how will those resources contribute to in-home care,” he said. “I think with the changing view of long-term services and support, it’s been recognized that if we put dollars into supporting people to stay healthy and active in their communities, they’ll have less of a need for long-term care in hospice.”
In the future, West Marin nonprofit case managers and volunteer drivers who supply the workforce for in-home senior care will become even more important for ensuring the success of the county’s initiative. West Marin Senior Services is preparing for this shift: the organization is hoping to recruit five or six visiting and driving volunteers for in-home clients in Stinson Beach and Bolinas.
“If we had a lot of volunteers, each individual would have less to be responsible for,” said Beth Carusillo, the care manager for Bolinas and Stinson Beach. “Right now, I end up doing the drives because I don’t have a pool of volunteers to pull from. If I had more volunteers, then I could spend more time focusing on in-home clients with the most needs.”
Volunteer coordinator Chloe Cook said, “It may be a five-mile drive, but five miles could be a hundred miles if you don’t drive and you can’t walk. If we have more people from those communities that are willing to be on-call volunteers, then we could cover those areas.”
Human connections
Jon Langdon, a retired contractor who lives a few blocks from the nonprofit’s offices in Point Reyes Station, volunteers as an on-call driver a few times a week. On a typical outing, he picks up his clients—his “patients,” as he fondly calls them—in either his Toyota extended cab or his new Prius and ferries them over the hill to buy groceries in Novato or to keep medical appointments in San Rafael.
Often, these trips can last three hours or more round-trip—a duration that makes each drive for Mr. Langdon as much about helping seniors get the services they need as it is about the car ride itself.
“This is part of my social life,” said Mr. Langdon, a self-described curmudgeon who said he developed a knack for ride-alongs years ago while hitchhiking the few miles it takes to get from Inverness to Point Reyes Station, just for fun. “The whole thing of being entrapped in a vehicle with somebody is that you have to talk. And most people, if you probe deep enough, have pretty interesting stories.”
One client whom Mr. Langdon described as an accomplished musician, conductor and college professor elaborated on how certain sounds from Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” were meant to represent actual dogs barking in the classical composer’s backyard. (Mr. Langdon had popped the famous suite into the Toyota’s CD player.)
Eighty-one-year-old Ewell McIssac, who lives at Walnut Place, a senior housing facility in Point Reyes Station, said she relies on Mr. Langdon to help her get around. “Sometimes we chat, and sometimes we don’t. Sometimes I find it’s nice not to talk at all. I’m very grateful that he would be willing to do that. It sort of amazes me.”
TRIPTrans, the program through which Mr. Langdon volunteers, is funded in part by county tax revenue and from outside grants. Although West Marin Senior Services receives nearly $100,000 from the county and even more from grants and donations, Ms. Cook said these revenue sources fall far short in keeping programs like TRIPTrans running without enormous help from local volunteers.
“The county program dollars are miniscule and don’t fully support the cost of running programs out here,” Ms. Cook said.
As the burden for ensuring adequate senior care falls squarely on volunteer efforts, West Marin Senior Services is seeking to find new volunteers who are living in the same towns and neighborhoods as seniors in need of care.
“We are the community that we serve,” Ms. Cook said. “We are not only people working in these communities, but we are members of these communities. Just picture yourself without West Marin Senior Services. West Marin would be a harder place to live without the services we provide.”
Anyone interested in volunteering with West Marin Senior Services may call Chloe Cook at (415) 663.8148 ext. 103.