managing specialized housing for the elderly.

In 1972, the Santa Ana Apartments, designed exclusively for older people of limited income, were completed and went into operation with full, fringe services including recreation, meals, and transportation.

Presently, C.R.I. is under contract to provide management services to housing projects under the St. Louis Authority. These responsibilities include seeing that the apartments are kept rented, supervising the maintenance and custodial staffs, and offering various programs to the residents, as well as dealing with their personal problems.

The Institute also operates an activities program for tenants of the Alverne, a downtown residence for the elderly.

Its latest venture caused an entire

mid-town motel to be transformed into a 226-unit apartment complex. Here, tenants receive full services and activities, including two meals a day. Charges range from $225 to $255 a month.

In many ways the vacated facility lent itself easily to revision. The existing pool, shuffleboard, dining and lounging areas, even the beauty salon, were readily incorporated into the new complex. Approximately $900,000 and eight months later, San Luis is filled to capacity and has a waiting list.

From visiting the homes of the elderly to creating homes for them, from a staff of three with a budget of $3,000 to an office and field force of 294 with a yearly operating budget of $1,752,708, this has been the accelerated course of the Cardinal Ritter Institute.

AAA Project in Puerto Rico

Helps Elderly To Help Themselves

A project operated by the Caguas

Area Agency on Aging in Puerto Rico is providing an opportunity for younger, healthier older persons to care for the chronically ill or handicapped elderly.

The project is being funded under Title X of the Public Works and Economic Development Act of 1965. A $214,476 grant was awarded to the area agency on aging through the Puerto Rico Community Services Administration.

The Caguas Area Agency on Aging encompasses a rural, semirural, and urban population totaling 264,513, of which an estimated 9% are over 60.

The project seeks to combat unemployment by providing training and

un

employment opportunities to skilled persons aged 50 to 60. It also offers basic home care to bed-ridden or home-bound, low-income aged who live alone or whose relatives cannot care for them.

Of 107 applicants, 40 have been selected as home health aides and given training in rehabilitation of the chronically ill. The aides are supervised by a registered nurse, a physical therapist, and a group of social services technicians from the Puerto Rico Social Services Department.

Each aide assumes responsibility for a six-patient case load. Three patients are visited every other day during a daily working period of seven and a half hours, five days a week.

To assist the aides, a team of lo

cal physicians has also been recruited to provide medical evaluations and routine checkups. The physicians make home visits to bed-ridden or home-bound older persons who are not Medicare beneficiaries.

The area agency on aging reports that the project has enabled many older persons to remain in their own homes.

ARIS Provides
Information on
Aging Research

The Aging Research Information System (ARIS), a computerized information storage and retrieval program in Austin, Tex., includes some 7,000 abstracts of research reports. Developed as part of a Title IV Research Utilization Grant to the Governor's Committee on Aging, ARIS responds to information requests nationally.

ARIS is designed to assist the user in selecting, from the research abstracts, material relevant to his/ her particular problem. In operation, the user selects words or phrases and combinations of these to indicate the area of interest. The computer searches the total data base, selecting abstracts containing the words. or phrases. Printouts provide either a bibliographic reference or a complete abstract according to the user's instructions.

There is no charge for the service. For a copy of the information search request form, write Mrs. Anne T. Kohler, Administrator, Research Utilization Program, Governor's Committee on Aging, P.O. Box 12786. Capitol Station, Austin, Tex., 78711, or phone: (512) 475-2717.

Action Volunteers

Work Together

In Hilo

Foster Grandparent Macario Ventura works at the Hilo Special Education Center, sponsored by the Hawaii Association to Help Retarded Children in Hilo (ACTION Photos by Phil Bernstein).

Throughout the U.S. over 162,000

senior citizens serve as volunteers in the Retired Senior Volunteer Program (RSVP). Another 13,000 seniors serve as Foster Grandparents.

Of this impressive total, 249 (233 RSVP's and 16 Foster Grandparents) serve Hawaii on the "Big Island," most of them in Hilo.

The two programs work closely together. For example, the Hilo Special Education Center, sponsored by the Hawaii Association to Help Retarded Children, has seven Foster Grandparents, each devoting four hours a day of one-to-one care for mentally and physically handicapped children. But the Center was completely remodelled and painted by RSVP volunteers, many of whom are retired carpenters, plumbers, or painters, using salvaged materials plus paint and lumber donated by civic organizations.

Eileen Pavao, Foster Grandparent Program Supervisor in Hilo says, "Nancy Matsunami, Director of the

Hawaii County RSVP program, and I try to coordinate our efforts as much as possible. She has given me a lot of good ideas on recruiting people and working with volunteers. And in Kona, where they have an infant stimulation program for retarded children, Nancy has asked me to aid her in training RSVP volunteers to work with retarded children, because our program is not ready to expand at this time to Kona. And we in turn make referrals to the RSVP program for people who don't qualify for FGP."

In addition to the Foster Grandparents at the Special Education Center, Ms. Pavao has one stationed at Project Keiki, a federally subsidized nursery school for children from lowincome families; four at the Hilo Child Development Center, a Community Services Administration Project Headstart nursery school; and several more at the Hilo Union School, a public elementary school with special classes for retarded children.

"I've seen a tremendous improvement in the Foster Grandparents' own mental attitude since they started," Ms. Pavao says. "They feel happier, useful again. They really look forward to coming to the Center each

day, and from what the teachers tell me, the children have made a lot of progress-in awareness of other people, in being more receptive to learning since they have had Foster Grandparents. They love their 'grandparents' and a real closeness has grown up on both sides."

RSVP's have benefitted equally from their volunteer work, according to Director Nancy Matsunami. "RSVP's here are contributing over 18,000 hours of volunteer time a year," she reports, "and this is really a great contribution-both for the agencies we work with and for the volunteers themselves.

"For example, one woman who was quite crippled and bent with arthritis came to us. She wasn't sure she'd be able to help anyone, but we assigned her to Friendly Visiting-a home-help service out of Hilo Hospital, where volunteers visit people who are shut-ins. Within a year she became so involved with what she was doing that she started forgetting about herself-she felt she was bringing so much pleasure to those shut-ins and today she is walking nice and straight and tall. Her physical appearance is so much better and there has been a great improvement in her whole outlook on life."

Ms. Matsunami's 233 volunteers serve at 31 or 32 sites "at last count," including Hilo Hospital,

where they perform various assignments. "Our work at the Hospital started," she says, "as the result of a visit that was made there by some volunteers, who noticed that the quality of the laundry was not very good, due to understaffing. So they started working in the laundry, folding linen for the pediatric and various other wards, and from there we branched out into a lot of other things."

Other RSVP's work at senior nutrition sites, such as the Pilialoha Center of the County's nutrition program and the Salvation Army meal site, formally known as the Aikane Center of Hawaii County Nutrition Program. There they not only prepare and serve hot meals for their elderly, low-income clients, but also teach crafts, lead social activities and entertain on a variety of musical instruments, some of them home-made.

"Carpenters from RSVP," says Ms. Matsunami, "have gone into the Salvation Army meal site and com

pletely renovated the kitchen facilities. They renovated the garage, building cabinets for storage of supplies, and built a bedroom for overnight stays. The volunteers have also renovated the Day Treatment Cen

RSVP Volunteer Julia Vite strums her ukulele as part of the entertainment at the Aikane Center, a Salvation Army meal site for the elderly, under the Hawaii County Nutrition Program. ter for the mental health program, and will be working on the new facility that the Outdoor Recreation Center is building to house animal life exhibits-helping with cabinet work, painting and carpentry."

The Federal and State grant of $93,335 would have been lost had not the Division of Family Services awarded those funds the summer of 1972 to the Community Service Council of Broward County. Broward, the only county in Florida to receive Title III funds for an Areawide Model Project on Aging, was selected because of its "ever-increasing population" according to Mr. H. W. Thompson, Director of the Community Service Council.

A Project Is Conceived

To translate an idea into an effective program requires not just a person but the right person. Broward was fortunate to have that "right" person, Mrs. Nan S. Hutchison. Former Dean and Director of Student Activities at Broward Community College and Dean of Women and Director of Student Activities at Florida Atlantic University, Mrs. Hutchison was selected to direct the Model Project on Aging. Her approach to this pioneer assignment is summed up in a statement she made at that time: "Every program for the elderly must be geared to their particular set of circumstances. That's why we are going to every part of the county to find out what the specific needs of people are." These words proved to be the key to most

of what has been accomplished in four years.

In order to "go to every part of of the county" a task force was appointed by the Community Service Council with Hollywood Mayor David Keating as chairman.

A Survey Is Made

The first task was to learn the circumstances of the elderly. A 73-item questionnaire, designed to pinpoint actual need in the areas of nutrition, transportation and telephone availability, housing, health, and assistance, was compiled. This questionnaire was taken personally to 1,027 white, black, rich and poor older persons living in north, central, and south Broward County.

Of those surveyed 52% lived alone and 75% said they wanted to participate in the proposed meals and companionship programs.

The survey had a dual purpose: first, to learn the actual needs of those 60 and over; second, to develop a statistically valid random survey of these persons to prove the needs of Broward's seniors to the Federal government's satisfaction. Research showed that 152,613 persons were over 60, comprising 24.6% of the population. The priority needs of those interviewed were health care, transportation, nutrition,

Dr. Nan Hutchinson is Executive Director of the Areawide Council on Aging of Broward County, Inc., Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

education, recreation, and information and referral.

Those conducting the survey had experiences they will long remember. One surveyor found herself interviewing a retiree from the lobby of a condominium by telephone. Others found senior citizens wanted to talk about everything except the items in the questionnaire which would reveal their needs-in some cases their desperate needs. Yet other interviewers were invited to have snacks or lunch. Through conducting the survey, quite apart from the statistical results, much was learned about the senior citizens of Broward as people with pride, dignity, and courage.

A Partnership Is Formed

The needs of the elderly were verified, but to launch programs to meet these needs required funds. According to the Older Americans Act, recipients of Federal funds must match, by proportionate amounts, money received. This meant that 29 cities in Broward County had to be persuaded to raise 10% to add to the Federal grant of 90% that first year. This was no small task. Some

* Ms. Sluyter is an Information Specialist for the Areawide Council on Aging of Broward County, Inc., Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

city fathers were skeptical of new programs.

In Pembroke Pines a council member said, "Older persons have set aside a little nest egg for retirement and do not need a food program." Mrs. Hutchison pointed out that the survey revealed that 91% of the seniors were eating inadequately and only 4.6% knew they had a nutrition problem. The result of the discussion was to table the request for funds until a later meeting.

In Hollywood a barrage of questions had to be answered. Factual answers to probing questions laid the foundation for the partnership between the cities and the area agency on aging. One city was amazed to learn that there were 255 elderly

persons with incomes below the poverty level living in their municipality.

The patient presentations of facts by the Executive Director and Task Force paid off. Wilton Manors, by a 3-2 vote, agreed to pay their share on condition that they receive a report of services to their residents over 60. The funds would be stopped if the services were not used. As a result of detailed reporting to municipalities in Broward, funds were approved in city after city. A partnership between the area agency on aging and the cities was formed.

Meanwhile Broward residents had to be made aware of the needs of the elderly in the county. The 1970 census revealed that 23,000 of Broward's 152,613 persons over 60 lived

below the poverty level. In 1973, one year after the Project on Aging began, that figure had risen by 15%, according to the Area Planning Board.

In keeping with the original policy that "every program must be geared to their set of circumstances," the elderly were consulted privately and in conference. In February, 1973, the first Conference on Aging was held at Broward Community College, planned and organized by the Project on Aging. Some 227 seniors came together to discuss their needs. Matters discussed included the separation of young and old, the often unadmitted problem of loneliness, and the more tangible problems of transportation, health, and lack of