Expanded Services for Older Adults
Aging services expand under federal funding
Shally Li, left, teaches fellow Parsippany LIVE participant Betty McGhee-Narey the fine art of Chinese cooking. Together they prepared moo shu pancakes with chicken and vegetable filling.
Photo by Karen Alexander
October 9, 2008
With the aid of a $478,492 federal grant, United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ is inaugurating a Naturally Occurring Retirement Community in Caldwell, inspired by a program in Parsippany that is helping senior citizens age in place.
The grant will provide two professionals experienced in senior services. They will split their time between the older adult communities in the two towns, providing the elderly with connections to a range of services.
The two-year federal funding, which began in August, was made possible with support from the offices of Sens. Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-Dist. 11).
NORC initiatives aim to connect seniors to community-based services, enabling them to remain in the homes where they have lived for years and maintain ties with neighbors and community institutions.
The “first order of business” in the MetroWest initiative “is sustaining our Parsippany LIVE program,” said Karen Alexander, who directs the NORC effort as director of eldercare services at UJC MetroWest.
The Parsippany NORC runs a range of programs for older adults, including yoga and cooking classes, ping-pong tournaments, and job placement services.
It enlisted local institutions, from churches and synagogues to the Police Athletic League, to house programs and provide social connections among Parsippany’s aging population.
Karen Alexander, director of eldercare services at UJC MetroWest NJ, second from right, explains Caldwell’s new NORC program at the town’s community center. With her are, standing, from left, colleagues Rachel Cohen, Roberta Schoenberg, and Maria Burak, Caldwell’s director of social services.
Photo by Robert Wiener
“In Caldwell we are starting from the ground up,” Alexander said. “Our goals are to take Parsippany, identify the pieces that can work, and replicate them in another community.”
One person aiding the effort is Roberta Schoenberg, an expert on the elderly who most recently directed a community-based health and fitness program sponsored by Livingston’s Saint Barnabas Medical Center. She was hired by Jewish Family Service of MetroWest — a UJC MetroWest beneficiary agency — to be a site coordinator at both NORC locations.
“We want to learn what the communities of Caldwell and Parsippany need and what would benefit the older residents to enable them to continue living in their communities,” Schoenberg said.
The other site coordinator is Rachel Cohen, who will also continue as program manager for the At Home Services Division of Jewish Vocational Service of MetroWest.
“It’s very exciting to be part of something that is organic and will be responsive to the specific needs of the community,” she said. “We have already been met with incredible enthusiasm toward the project.”
Cohen, Schoenberg, and Alexander aim to build an infrastructure that will link together Caldwell’s business community, public sector, and houses of worship in offering support to the NORC they call Caldwell LIVE.
Alexander described Caldwell — a “solid middle-class community” with a median income of $61,000 — as an “ideal choice.”
“Based on 2000 census figures, the town had 3,300 households, and some 40 percent of them contained an adult over the age of 55,” she said. “There is already a senior center and a community center and a very strong vibe of community life that give us a structure to work with.”
Alexander and her associates have already reached out to Rabbi Alan Silverstein of Congregation Agudath Israel of West Essex in Caldwell, to local Christian clergy, and to officials at the town’s community center and public library — all located within a compact downtown area that spans slightly more than a mile.
“We can really have an impact in that kind of geography,” she said.
Cohen and Schoenberg are also engaged in what they call “listening sessions” with older adults in both Caldwell and Parsippany, learning about their interests and their needs, and discussing such topics as transportation, access to medical care, housing, food and nutrition, outreach, safety, and community services.
The executive directors of both JFS and JVS said the NORC expansion fits neatly into their agencies’ mission.
“As baby boomers are retiring from the workforce, a huge majority of individuals do not want to sit at home and engage in hobbies and [lead] sedentary, inactive lives. They want to work and give back,” said JVS executive director Leonard Schneider. “So we are providing for a new growth area of helping individuals find new opportunities for the next phase of their lives.”
Reuben Rotman, JFS executive director, said the aim of the “social work staff is to help seniors and their families remain living in their communities as long as is meaningfully possible, then help them to make transitions to other living arrangements. The NORC project allows us to try some new models and creative partnerships.”
Alexander, who spent the past three years as the hands-on director of Parsippany LIVE, will be delegating much of the day-to-day field work to Cohen and Schoenberg. She sees her new role as “a mentor, a resource, a coach.”
Between now and when the grant expires on July 31, 2010, her goal is to help two MetroWest communities see themselves “as not only a great place to raise a family but a great place to grow older.”
