State slices funds for elderly

Meals and health care take a hit

Hard-won state funding for Meals on Wheels and other programs vital to older and disabled people is being withheld to the tune of $2 million to meet state budget-trimming goals, social services officials said.

The programs are the main source for a range of services -- including home-delivered meals and in-home aides -- that often help older people stay at home and out of more costly, tax-funded nursing homes and assisted living centers.

Advocates for older people had hailed a $2 million increase voted by legislators in July as a success of the last legislative session. But now they're expressing disappointment that the increase is being withheld as part of an overall belt-tightening by state officials who face falling revenues because of the declining economy.

"I am very dismayed," said Gail Holden, director of adult services for Wake County Human Services. "I was hoping that we would continue to see increases. It seems like we take from our most vulnerable citizens."

Marie McBride, Wake County delegate to the Tar Heel Senior Legislature, a statewide advocacy group, said that people who get services through the state program are low-income, mostly female and 77 years old, on average. The state's decision not to deliver the $2 million increase that McBride and others pushed could end up costing more in services such as emergency room visits and long-term care, she said.

"It'll have to come from somewhere, because these are people that can't get by by themselves," she said.

Alan Winstead, director of Meals on Wheels of Wake County, where there's a 250-person waiting list, said the withheld funding means that the agency will lose ground instead of gaining it, as it had hoped.

"Private contributions are not increasing, either, but the demand keeps rising, especially in tough economic times," Winstead said.

Dennis Streets, director of the Division of Aging and Adult Services, which funnels the money to local agencies for distribution, said rising food and fuel costs mean that funding increases are needed just to keep serving the same number of clients.

Across the state, thousands of older people are on waiting lists for home and community-based services and are likely to stay there.

"Certainly you'd expect that either levels of service or numbers [of clients] would be affected," Streets said.

In addition to home-delivered meals, the affected services pay for care like that at Central Orange Adult Day Health Center in Hillsborough, where older adults with medical needs can spend their days.

That means the clients' caregivers can continue to work or otherwise take advantage of respite from their round-the-clock duties.

"Caregivers are looking for a secure place for their loved ones to go, to receive services and to have that quality of life," said Alvonia Baldwin, program director for the day health center.

Adult day health centers have a registered nurse on duty for at least four hours a day.

That means that participants in the program can get the medications, blood pressure checks and vital sign monitoring they need.

"They really love being here," said Elizabeth Oudejans, a consultant who's working with the center to provide arts and music activities for participants. "To stay at home all day would be devastating."

At the brightly decorated center on Thursday, seven older people concentrated hard on a bingo game as another slept in a recliner before a television playing a "Gunsmoke" rerun. Aides and volunteer Dot Rutherford helped people with food, drink and trips to the bathroom when the game ended.

"To me, this place is just so needed," Rutherford said. "I want to see a big push for this."

The Hillsborough center is built on the idea that older people, even in bad health, aren't on a permanent downhill ride that ends in death.

"We have people that come through and have had strokes; they get better, and then they leave," said Jerry Passmore, director of the Orange County Department on Aging. "It's not like an end-all."

Shortfalls in promised state funding mean that a range of services that help older people will feel strain, officials of area aging councils said.

"We fund our senior centers with that, our transportation is affected by that and our elder care program is affected by that," Passmore said.

The goal is "to keep older adults as independent as possible for as long as possible," said Joan Pellettier, director of the Triangle J Area Agency on Aging, an umbrella group for seven counties in and around the Triangle.