Budget cuts will hit seniors

Budget cuts will hit seniors



Some sites may lose ability to serve 250 seniors meals


BY STEVE METZER
STAFF WRITER
SMETZER@LAWTON-CONSTITUTION.COM




Another round of severe budget cuts impacting senior nutrition programs in Oklahoma will result in job losses, some seniors not being served by the programs, and waiting lists for things like home delivery of meals to people who are infirm, the administrator of 32 nutrition sites in Southwest Oklahoma warns.
Ken Jones, director of the Area Agency on Aging (AAA) in Duncan — a conduit of federal and state funds that support 32 nutrition sites in Comanche, Caddo, Cotton, Grady, Jefferson, Mc-Clain, Stephens and Tillman counties — said the agency has been told to plan to spend $742,866 less in fiscal year 2011, which begins in July, than it spent in fiscal year 2010 — a year in which the budget has already been reduced by $436,793.
The magnitude of the cuts has forced Jones and other AAA directors in the state to make wholesale changes in the way programs will be run in the next fiscal year. On Monday, he said The Lawton Constitution and other newspapers will begin printing “requests for proposals” from nonprofit, for-profit and local government organizations that may be interested in administering programs. They will have to maintain existing nutrition site locations and standards mandated by the federal government in the Older Americans Act — which created the programs in 1965 — but do it as demanded by the new budget constraints.
In the past, nutrition sites in the area have been overseen by nine project directors, people employed at sites for between 27 and 31 years. Jones said the new plan calls for administration to be overseen by one person and one deputy. In the past, nine accountants were employed to keep track of individual program finances.
In the next fiscal year, two (one whose salary won’t be funded through the AAA) will have to do it all. Additionally, jobs of some other employees at individual sites will be lost.
In addition to the nutrition sites, the AAA also channels funding for Legal Aid of Western Oklahoma, a caregiver program (which provides respite, counseling and other support for people caring for ill or infirm seniors), and the Center for Creative Living in Lawton. Jones said those programs, too, will be impacted. Legal Aid likely will not be able to take as many clients, he said.
Functions of the caregiver program, which have in the past been handled by the Great Plains Improvement Foundation, will be taken over by nutrition sites — further affecting jobs. Jones said the Center for Creative Living, which has other sources of funding, probably won’t be as negatively affected by the cuts.
Jones, whose own office will see a $116,556 funding cut between the start of fiscal 2010 and fiscal 2011, will lose a full-time secretary and a planner/grant writer.
If the budget cuts were to be implemented with no changes to program administration or payroll — with the money just subtracted from nutrition site budgets — Jones said the sites would lose capacity to serve meals to an estimated 450 senior citizens in the region. As the plan stands now, without some additional help from local communities sites may still lose capacity to serve 250 seniors in the next fiscal year.
As declining state revenues forced deep cuts at nutrition sites over the past year, local sites have turned to their communities for support, Jones said, and many have been able to continue providing for seniors with help from volunteers and contributions of cash and services.
He said with even more support and creative thinking, sites may be able to come up with plans to save money and feed more seniors. In fact, organizations that respond to the AAA’s request for proposals will be graded in part by how well they plan to coordinate with other local service agencies, public and private.
“We are hoping to get a lot more community support as the cuts take effect,” Jones said.
The reality, though, is that waiting lists for meals and other services very likely will result from the massive cuts, with those judged most frail to be placed highest on the lists. Jones said area nutrition programs in the past have provided for more than 53,000 home-delivered meals annually to men and women who are homebound.
In the next fiscal year, other organizations and programs will have to take more responsibility. One possibility, the AAA director said, is the Advantage Program administered through Medicaid. Its purpose is to help people to stay in their homes for as long as possible without moving into nursing homes, and its budget has not been cut as severely as some others. Another possibility is that local church groups will step up even more than they have already. Jones said he has been amazed at the level of local community commitment to nutrition sites he has witnessed in the past year.
“We will work with them (seniors being referred to other service providers) through outreach,” Jones said. “Just because we’re not feeding them anymore doesn’t mean they won’t be getting fed.”




FILE PHOTO
Lettie Davis, right front, Lourena Oatis, Jimmy Rogers, left front, and Barbara Rogers enjoy a meal and good conversation at the Patterson Center last year. Due to state budget cuts, some senior programs may no longer be offered.