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to the many problems of older people and to stimulate action by agencies that serve or could serve the elderly.

Our Research Division makes it possible for planning to be done on an informed basis. It collects data and provides statistical analysis on programs and needs of the elderly. It operates an information and documents center with an outstanding collection of materials on aging, open to all who serve the elderly.

We are developing a Program Planning Reference Guide in cooperation with other agencies who serve the elderly, based upon sharing of data and a move toward common definitions, to achieve more effective cooperative planning for our senior citizens.

A new Division for the Handicapped, still in its formative stages, will assure that the necessary age-comprehensive services for handicapped Chicagoans are achieved, in the same way the Mayor's Office for Senior Citizens has fostered programs for the aged. We have succeeded in developing a career ladder for specialists in work with the handicapped, comparable to our existing one in aging. Both represent pioneer efforts by municipal government in this nation. We expect to play a leadership role with agencies serving and associations of the physically handicapped in an Awareness Day, early in 1975, to focus the attention of all of us on some of the barriers facing people who are striving to be independent.

While essentially a planning and coordinating agency, the Mayor's Office for Senior Citizens also takes responsibility for putting its ideas into action— for achieving its plans.

Our Foster Grandparent Program employs more than 100 elderly men and women in service roles at a variety of child care institutions, enriching the lives of children who need the warm, loving relationship of a concerned adult, while providing much-needed income and highly useful and gratifying activity to the elderly employed.

Our Elder Artisan Program employs more than 150 craftspeople, who use their crochet and knitting skills to produce unique toys and high-fashion women's wear, through small group co-ops we have formed. The items are now being sold in such department stores as Marshall Field and Nieman-Marcus. Our Help and Guidance program is providing intensified social services to older men and women who have low incomes, including a purchased home help service within the Model Cities areas.

The Chicago Transit Authority reduced fare program for senior citizens, begun with the help of the Mayor's Office for Senior Citizens, is now a 24-hour service, and our Office continues to coordinate this on-going registration at 50 neighborhood locations. As of October 31, there were 296,332 cumulative registrations by senior citizens for the CTA reduced fare ID card.

As of September 30, our Office had provided assistance to 22,850 individuals who sought help in overcoming problems with services and service agencies. Again, as of September 30, there were 2,407 intake and initial referrals to agencies from whom we had purchased services, and an additional 700 further referrals. Direct enabling services were provided to 1.900 individuals.

Our invoice figures show 109.942.9 units of purchased service delivered by September 30, an undercount, since invoices to date by all agencies had not been submitted.

We had provided technical assistance to 604 organizations by August 31. We had served an additional 242 organizations with pre-retirement programs as of September 30.

Our shared-cost bus program served 443 groups and 17,687 elderly, as of November 15.

By October 31, 624 elderly clients had been referred to the Board of Health for the comprehensive health services we had purchased from them, to serve our older people living outside of the Model Cities target areas, where neighborhood health centers presently do not exist.

Our City-wide nutrition program, begun in 1968, and funded by the federal Administration on Aging, as well as the City of Chicago, is known to senior citizens as the Golden Diners Club. Chief model for today's national nutrition program, it provides elderly men and women with a hot, well-balanced meal five days a week at more than 50 locations. More than 3,000 elderly are served each day. In the 12 month project period ended August 31, 392,201 meals were served to an unduplicated count of 20,226 elderly Chicagoans. Saturday and Sunday service in each of our 5 service areas and the opening of 17 additional

sites is proposed in the 1975 city budget. The expanded program should serve an additional 1,000 elderly each day. The Congress has authorized larger appropriations for this program, but the federal funding has not met the level of authorization.

Conducted in cooperation with community agencies, who serve as site sponsors, the Golden Diners Club provides more than good food at a good price. It recognizes ethnic food preferences and offers opportunities for socialization, nutrition education and health screening. Enrichment programs keep participants involved in the world around them. More than 400 volunteers contribute services at nutrition program sites. A home delivered meals program provides two meals a day, five days a week, to 160 elderly who are home bound. We plan a Saturday and Sunday expansion of this program, with funds from the budget you are considering.

Transportation to and from nutrition sites, for shopping, check cashing or visits to the doctor or clinic is available on a scheduled basis, from a fleet of minibuses purchased by our Office, and operated under contract with us by the YMCA. Some of these are specially equipped to serve the handicapped. That program will also be expanded with approval of the proposed 1975 budget. The Nutrition Program, as with all of our projects, reaches out to employ the elderly. In all, more than 375 older people are employed in special senior citizen programs of the Mayor's Office for Senior Citizens. The expansion proposed of our Nutrition Program will increase this number.

The problem of the older worker-defined as age 45 and over by the federal government-is of particular concern to us. For many years our Office has worked to develop retirement planning programs for the under-65 population. We are working just as hard to develop better attitudes about and opportunities for the so-called older worker. This work in employment and retirement is now called industrial gerontology, the applied science of aging as it relates to work. In addition to the work within our own Office, as a member of the Manpower Planning Council, I am chairing a Task Force on Older Workers, which is reviewing the problem and studying present Manpower programs, with a report scheduled for early next year. The Task Force includes older workers as well as agencies that serve them.

In fact, intimately related to all of our work is participation by citizens. From the first Mayor's Commission in 1956-the nation' first municipal office on aging-to today's City of Chicago Planning Council on Aging-a model developed by our Office as part of a federal research and demonstration projectcitizens interested in the elderly and aging have been deeply involved in our activity.

We have divided the City into 5 service areas, with 100,000+ of the City's 517,000 people age 60 and over in each area. Monthly caucuses are held in each area with the leadership of the city's more than 400 senior citizen clubs and groups, to exchange ideas and information and evaluate services and plans. Each area elects a senior citizen representative to the Community Advisory Group of our Planning Council on Aging, and nine more senior citizens co-chair program committees of the Council, with leading professionals and heads of agencies. They are presently at work identifying issues and priorities that concern the elderly, and will be advising our staff as it develops proposals related to them. A Research Advisory Group of outstanding academicians completes the membership of the Council.

That group, under the chairmanship of Dr. Robert J. Havighurst is at work on the design of a needs assessment instrument, for a survey with special emphasis on people age 75 and over, as well as elderly from particular ethnic backgrounds, including Spanish-speaking, Oriental, Polish, black and others. The purpose of the work is to provide the tools for a continuing study of the effects of social services on the elderly, and for ongoing assessments of the needs of older people. It is hoped the survey model will be valid for at least 5 and perhaps 10 years of use in Chicago and other cities.

We have scheduled a National Research Utilization Conference in Chicago next February 23 through 26, with support from the Administration on Aging of HEW. Called "Putting it all Together: from felt need to need reduction," the Conference will draw on our experience over the last 3 years in developing a model for comprehensive coordinated services to older people.

At the request of the General Accounting Office, an arm of the Congress, we are making available to them all of the data and the tools we have developed in our work in Chicago, for use by the GAO to evaluate the effectiveness of federal programs in alleviating needs of the nation's elderly.

The February Conference will cover such subjects as (1) how to assess needs, (2) how to organize for and deliver services, (3) how to evaluate client effects and program effectiveness, (4) how to effect cooperative planning, (5) how to impact decisions and decision makers and (6) how the relationsihp between the public and private sectors is changing in the field of aging.

I am very pleased that our good friend Dr. Arthur S. Flemming, former Secretary of HEW, and presently both the U.S. Commissioner on Aging and Chairman of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, will be the conference speaker on the latter topic. With equal pleasure, I am happy to announce that the former U.S. Commissioner on Aging, John B. Martin, will open our Chicago Conference.

Senior Central is the name of our Chicago model for delivery of comprehensive. coordinated services to the elderly, based upon sound research and the input of the elderly themselves.

Senior Central provides services to meet needs the elderly themselves have assessed as critical-casework, comprehensive health services, hearing assessments, home help, homemaker, counseling and housing assistance through purchase of service contracts with leading social service agencies or other city departments, such as the Board of Health. It seeks to provide access to a continuum of coordinated service to every older person in the city, especially those with low income, the isolated, and those with other problems such as reduced mobility and emotional inadequacy.

Like all programs of the Mayor's Office for Senior Citizens, Senior Central acts to encourage the continued independence of older persons, in this case by providing supportive services when necessary to delay, reverse, or avoid institutionalization.

What happens when an older person calls for assistance with a problem-as more than 1,000 men and women do-at our Central Office alone, every month? One of five Senior Central Information and Referral Centers-Northeast, Northwest, Central/West, Southeast, and Southwest-moves into action. Center staff links the individual elderly person with the most appropriate resource to resolve his problem. Enabling services are also provided to insure that the elderly client does, in fact, receive help.

These services include advocacy, escort, practical assistance, personal transportation, outreach, and always follow-up. Each Center has a program of friendly visitors to the homebound and institutionalized elderly. All specially equipped van, called the FriendShip, moves throughout the city to bring trained staff to older people, with help for their problems, wherever these older people are.

We have contracted with five social service agencies to operate these centers, in close cooperation with our Office.

In addition to ensuring the provision of needed services for individuals, the Mayor's Office for Senior Citizens provides technical assistance and also training in the field of aging.

This may mean such services as:

Providing basic information on aging to a magazine writer. An example will be found in the winter issue of the First Federal Saver.

Helping a business executive set up a pre-retirement counseling program. Our work with Bell and Howell is a case in point.

Consulting with agencies to interest them in establishing programs for the aged. Our assistance to the Chicago Consortium of Colleges and Universities has resulted in their commitment to establish programs for the elderly. Further, the University of Illinois will go forward to establish a multidisciplinary center in gerontology at its Chicago Circle Campus.

Research and preparation of position papers on public policies related to aging and the elderly. Such a paper on transportation problems of the elderly was provided for hearings of the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging. Interpreting legislation to employers and employees. Our publication on Pension Reform has been widely used.

Giving special services and providing legislative reports to senior citizen clubs and self-help groups. We have published 5 Legislative Reports so far this year, and discussed the issues at senior citizen club caucuses in each of our 5 service areas.

The Mayor's Office for Senior Citizens provides leadership training programs to assist older people in the organization and development of what is now a citywide network of self-help senior citizen clubs and groups, and with high quality programming for them. In addition, the Office is a field placement site for the training of University students in gerontology. Young and old often work and

learn together. Presently, a graduate student from the University of Chicago is interning in our Program Development Division and three Roosevelt University undergraduate students are working out of our service offices in the field.

The Mayor's Office for Senior Citizens plays a national leadership role, not only through its research and demonstration projects and development of service delivery models; but also through staff activity in the major national associations of aging and gerontology, work with staff of legislative committees and cooperative efforts with other major cities.

Our Deputy Director, Mrs. Andree Oliver, has been named to co-chair the Task Force on Information and Referral of the Federal Executive Board located in Chicago, along with a representative of the Social Security Administration. During 1975 our Office and the Social Security Administration will develop an agreement for appropriate involvement of the Social Security Administration in the information and referral system that our Office maintains.

I continue to serve as Vice President of the Urban Elderly Coalition, a national association of municipal offices on aging, and have recently accepted the chairmanship of the Public Policy Committee of the National Council on the Aging, along with membership in the NCOA Executive Committee. We have already gone on record for early passage of a comprehensive national health insurance program that improves upon Medicare.

In Illinois, we seek passage in the next session of the Legislature of a $15 million dollar appropriation for community programs in aging, to supplement the limited funds presently available under Title III of the Older Americans Act. The Illinois Department on Aging now operates only with funds required for matching to access federal Title III social services and Title VII nutrition dollars. We believe the example of Chicago in allocating dollars far beyond the minimum amounts possible, should also be followed by the State.

I had the opportunity in late August to meet at the White House with President Ford, to discuss problems in Aging. I tried to make two points with the President in our meeting, one, that the elderly have been the group hit hardest by inflation and any budget or program reductions undertaken in the name of fighting inflation should spare our older people, and second, that the President should use his influence to end mandatory retirement practices based on chronological age alone, because they are destructive of the basis of a free society, namely, the right of each person to be judged on the basis of his own merit. We are all entitled to that.

The Mayor's Office for Senior Citizens exists because city government in Chicago is responsive to human needs.

The needs of the elderly and the handicapped are sometimes very special. The height of a step on the bus-the need for a ramp at a curb.

But the aims of the elderly and the handicapped are perhaps universal. To live life fully, to be part of the mainstream, to achieve and maintain independence.

The Mayor, the city government, the staff of the Mayor's Office for Senior Citizens, and, I know, the members of the City Council, are committed to do their very best to make it possible.

SENIOR CITIZENS AND THE CITY OF CHICAGO 1975 BUDGET

The Chicago City Council adopted on December 13 a budget for calendar year 1975, that, in Mayor Richard J. Daley's words, places "special emphasis on senior citizens." Among other items, the 1975 budget provides:

1. $944,074 to operate the Mayor's Office for Senior Citizens (MOSC), an increase of $135.858 over the 1974 figure of $808,216. This includes MOSC's new Division for the Handicapped.

2. Matching funds of up to $90,000 for MOSC's administrative and planning work as Chicago's Area Agency on Aging under Title III of the Older Americans Act. This exceeds the 25% match required for that part of Title III funds allocated for planning and administration. (Additional in-kind contributions of $64.894 by the City and $94,000 from private grantee agencies will supplement the $991,961 Title III federal funds allocated to Chicago.)

3. Matching funds of $25,000 and an in-kind contribution of $19,645 for MOSC's Elder Artisan Program, in which senior craftspeople use their crochet or knit skills to produce quality handcrafted items from exclusively designed patterns. Model Cities/CCUO (Chicago Committee on Urban Opportunity) will

provide a similar cash amount from OEO funds. A community board has been formed to raise additional funds for the program.

4. Matching funds of $12,000 for MOSC's $223,054 ACTION funded Foster Grandparent Program, and a $41,186 in-kind contribution.

5. Matching funds of $125,000 for MOSC's $1,826,548 Title VII Older Americans Act Nutrition Program will be augmented by an additional appropriation of $528,000 to purchase food and provide transportation, plus an allocation of $283,000 from the Public Employment Program (Title II of the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act) to hire 77 additional personnel for work in the Nutrition Program, most of whom will be senior citizens. (Additional in-kind contributions of $68,968 by the City and $254,080 from private agency nutrition site sponsors will supplement the federal nutrition funds allocated to Chicago.) The additional funds and staff for the Nutrition Program will enable MOSC to:

(a) add 40 persons (80 meals a day) to the 150 people now being served through MOSC's home-delivered meals program, and 1,000 persons per day to the 3,000 people now being served at congregate dining sites,

(b) add Saturday and Sunday service to at least one site in each of MOSC's five service areas, and open an additional 17 congregate dining sites to the 55 for which MOSC is presently funded,

(c) add 19,200 units of transportation service (one-way ride) to the 73,714 units already purchased. These units of service will be divided in the following way: 12,000 on a scheduled basis (total 63,428), 4,200 exclusively for the handicapped (total 22,200), and 3,000 for demand-activated service (total 7,286).

6. Fifty people will be assigned to the Mayor's Office for Senior Citizens by Model Cities/CCUO, through a grant of funds under Title I of the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act. They will chiefly be assigned to field work.

7. Eleven people will be assigned to the Mayor's Office for Senior Citizens through a grant of funds under Title VI of the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act, and will chiefly work in the Nutrition Program.

8. A 50% reduction in the $20 and $35 tax for city vehicle stickers-estimated at a $1 million annual revenue loss to the city-which will benefit 61,500 senior citizens.

9. A 50% reduction in building permit fees for alterations and repairs in buildings of four units or less owned and occupied by senior citizens.

10. A revision of the sidewalk repair program on walks adjacent to buildings of four units or less owned and occupied by senior citizens from a 50/50 cost sharing to one of 25% by the senior citizens and 75% by the city.

11. Establishment in the Fire Department of a Bureau of Emergency Medical Service, with a fleet of new modular ambulances and the latest life-saving equipment, expected to be of particular value to the elderly.

Mr. AHRENS. I would like to address directly some issues and problems that we feel should be considered in renewal of the Older Americans Act.

I think you could do much to strengthen the involvement of local governments in aging. Present area agencies on aging seem to be a collection of newly created private entities, parts of councils of governments, multicounty urban and rural groupings, some arrangements I don't even understand and a few-too few of the Nation's cities.

In my view, not many of these will survive any critical drop in title III funds and even now must spend an inordinate amount of time and effort on simple survival problems.

I am concerned about the continuity of area agencies for the aging and securing the maximum involvement and participation of local governments.

The Administration on Aging has allowed itself to be drawn into the fallacy of thinking, too often, that it is now really dealing with three levels of government, Federal, State, and local. With few exceptions, this just isn't so.

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