Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 3, 1993 TAG: 9302030144
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: MADELYN ROSENBERG STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Medium
NEW CONCEPT IN DAY CARE
A dozen rockers and easy chairs sit side by side in the middle of a sunny activities room at Virginia Tech's Adult Day Care Center.But most of the rockers aren't rocking. The easy chairs aren't laid back with the footrests up. The center - the first of its kind in the New River Valley - opened in mid-December, but only a few adults have registered.
"We're getting a lot of calls and we're still in the enrolling process," said Puspa Das, the center's director. "It's a new concept. These things take time."
She believes that once people are educated about adult day care, the activities room will fill up.
"Our purpose is to help this population that's not able to stay home and care for themselves, but don't need to be in a nursing home," Das said recently as she conducted a tour through Wallace Hall.
There are a number of reasons for adult day care - to give respite to the caretaker at home and to provide the adults social interaction.
"Sometimes they may spend the whole day in front of a television set," Das said.
At the center, there is a television set hidden away in the resting room. But many of the activities are more interactive.
This place offers exercise for the body and the mind, Das said.
She walks into an enclosed porch and points to the slide and swings across the way. The children's day-care center is next to the adult center in Wallace Hall, and on sunny days, when adults go out to sit on the porch, they can watch and hear the children.
The center is open five days a week, but clients can stay once a week or once in a while if they prefer.
Regardless of the turnout in recent weeks, Das believes there is a need for this center, a need for people who devote their days and nights to caring for the elderly to take a break.
"They can take care of business, go shopping, get their hair done or just stay at home and have a quiet day," she said. "I've seen many cases where the caregiver died before the elderly person did. They try so hard to do what's best for this person, but sometimes they do not take care of themselves."
Once clients start coming in, Das plans to provide family counseling at the center, and a support group.
Experts estimate some 225 people in the New River Valley could benefit from adult day care.
There are about 50 of these centers in Virginia - only about 22 percent of the slots needed for the current aging population. But the number has been growing, here and nationwide, since the 1970s.
As the population ages, Das says, the need is greater. In Virginia in 1990, some 681,200 people were age 65 or older.
According to the Virginia Institute on Adult Day Care, 1.25 percent of the population needs and will use adult day care. That means 8,515 older Viriginians should have been getting day care in 1990.
The institute, directed by Lynne Seward of Richmond, calculates a need for 133 new day-care centers in the state licensed for 30 participants per day.
The centers first started opening in hospital settings, but now are out in the communities, Seward said.
"The reason demand is so strong now is that so many people are living longer," she said. And during those final years, many of them need more care.
In the past, care has been either not affordable or not available, Seward said.
"They used to institutionalize people routinely. But now, that is economically and socially unacceptable."