Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, June 21, 1990 TAG: 9006210066
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: KIM SUNDERLAND NEW RIVER VALLEY BUREAU
DATELINE: DUBLIN LENGTH: Medium
And many health-care and human-services professionals, as well as older people, expressed their support for such a program to the Virginia Department for the Aging commissioner, who held a town meeting Tuesday at New River Community College.
"For a long time, people have considered day care to be only for kids swinging on swings," said Elizabeth Spencer of Christiansburg, a member of the Senior Concerns Committee. "People now realize it can be for older folks too."
The afternoon meeting in Richardson Auditorium drew about 65 people who came to meet Thelma Bland, the newly appointed commissioner, and to share concerns and solutions regarding services for older people.
This was Bland's 10th town meeting; she has scheduled them with each of the state's 25 regional aging agencies.
Statewide, Bland said, the common problems facing the elderly are transportation, home repair, affordable health care and long-term care.
"And considering the budget problems the state is facing, we need to look to other areas for those who need services most," said Bland, emphasizing coordination of all community services.
Additionally, a handful of participants said a need exists for adult day care.
The Senior Concerns Committee conducted an informal study of needs last year and found that the frail and the elderly need adult care and that they have an interest in it.
"And we'd like to see one [a day-care program] developed in the New River Valley," said Spencer, who is the committee's chairwoman.
Administrators from Blacksburg's Warm Hearth Retirement Village and Radford Community Hospital also said that a need exists.
"We need to do something with adult day care," said Joyce Hoerner, administrator at Warm Hearth. "And we need to work with the area colleges and universities. Virginia can be the leader in the field of aging."
Other concerns were voiced by members of the New River Valley Agency on Aging, which serves the Fourth Planning District and which helped sponsor the meeting.
Program supervisors discussed their services and funding problems in preparation of the agency's annual area plan, which must be submitted to the state Department for the Aging by Aug. 1.
One of the biggest changes in the plan is the five-day distribution of bag lunches to confined citizens. It will be reduced to four days.
There are no funds to transport the food five days a week, said Debbie Palmer, executive director of the New River Valley Agency on Aging.
Other people interested in that program will have to join 30 others already on a waiting list.
by CNB