Neighborhood Falmouth

NEWS RELEASE: Falmouth Enterprise, September 8, 2009
Building a Neighborhood in Falmouth
     By Bob Haskell, Freelance Journalist, September 8, 2009
      Wouldn’t it be wonderful if every senior citizen lived like Mary Worth? You know, the comic strip character who’s about 150 years old but who lives on and on as if she’s forever 60. Everyone would age ever so gracefully—always mixing a sense of youthful vitality into the maturity of their years. They would be financially comfortable and as fit as they were when they were 40. They would have friends of all ages—men and women—who would seek them out for advice and hang on their every word.
     Face it. Many senior citizens do not live like Mary Worth. They have aches and pains that they didn’t have 10 years ago. They don’t drive as well as they used to, if they still drive at all. They try to make ends meet with less money than they earned in their prime. They are lonely because they do not live close to their families or because husbands or wives or old friends have left them for good. Yet, they are still independent enough to want to stay in their own homes, or they are afraid that they can’t afford to live in housing for senior citizens for the rest of their lives.
     More people seem to be living longer, thanks to the miracles of modern medicine and the benefits of Medicare, Medicaid, and other healthcare programs. And some people in this town know that senior citizens can use some help to continue living at home.
     Neighborhood Falmouth is their answer to this situation. It is a nonprofit membership program for people 55 and older who can use a little help around the house or who need a ride to the doctor or grocery store or who simply want some company. Volunteers are ready to help them.
     “An alarming number of senior citizens ask for help because they are depressed,” said a Samaritan hotline volunteer. “So many senior citizens here could use a visit or a little ride or even be taken to lunch. The answer to these problems is so simple. It’s people reaching out.”
     Neighborhood Falmouth began reaching out in April. It is modeled after Beacon Hill Village that began helping senior citizens to live as independently as possible in Boston in 2001.
     Neighborhood Falmouth is conducting a membership drive in September and October for Falmouth people who can use its services or who want to support cause—suspecting that they may need some help sooner or later.
     People are asked to pay $600 a year for a single membership or $900 for a two-person household.  Then they can call Ken and Karin Bohr for some help. The Bohrs live in North Falmouth, and they are the program’s executive directors. They will call people who have volunteered to assist the members with such things as:
                --Changing light bulbs, hanging pictures, and taking out the trash;
                --A ride to a doctor for an appointment or to a pharmacy for a prescription or to a grocery store. Volunteers can also bring groceries to members, if necessary;
                --Figuring out those newfangled computers and cellphones and digital televisions;
                --Paying bills and balancing the checkbook.
     Other services include emergency pet care; monitoring members’ homes when they are away; telephone check-ins; connections with members who share similar interests; and providing referrals for plumbers, electricians, and other contractors who do quality work without charging an arm and a leg. Call 508-564-7543 or check out www.neighborhoodfalmouth.org for more information and to become a member.
     “We don’t take blood pressure or give medications, but our volunteers can do a lot of other things to make our members’ lives a little easier,” Ms. Bohr explained.
     The Bohrs and Redwood Wright, the secretary of the 18-member board of directors, claim that the needs reflect the fact that Falmouth has an aging population. About 8,000 fulltime Falmouth residents are 65 and older, according to Mr. Wright. They live in 5,800 of the town’s 35,000 homes, by his count.
     Granted, not all of these seniors need help. But Mr. Wright is convinced that a large enough number can use a helping hand to justify Neighborhood Falmouth’s existence.
     So far, the program has 61 memberships for a total of 81 people. The goal is to reach 125 memberships during this drive.
     “That would sustain us and keep us financially viable,” said Mr. Bohr who explained that operational costs will run about $150,000 each year. Board members are seeking funding from grants, gifts, business people, and other donors to cover the operational costs that the membership fees will not.
     They are also encouraging people to sign us as volunteers.
     “We have about 30 volunteers, which is more than enough for now. But we’ll need more as our memberships increase,” Mr. Bohr said. “We would like to have 50 volunteers on hand all the time.”
     “We need people who have some time to spare, who are community minded and who are willing to understand the elderly,” said Phylisanne Simpson, the volunteer coordinator. “The volunteers have to understand that the members may not be happy, and may be a little bit flustered, because of the things they can’t do.”
     Potential volunteers are interviewed and checked for criminal records. The organization carries liability insurance for staff members and volunteers, Ms. Bohr said.
     Some members ask to be volunteers because they do not think they will need help themselves right away. But this thing called age sneaks up on people. They discover they can’t push the old lawn mower or clean out the gutters or change a light bulb because their shoulders and knees and hips and hands don’t work as well as they used to.
     That’s what happened to Margaret Cooper who lives in the Hatchville section of East Falmouth.
     “It sounded like a good idea to help keep people in their own homes,” she explained. “I signed up [last spring] to support the organization. I didn’t think I’d need it for the first couple of years.
     She has since asked for help with a bathroom light and to find someone to power-wash her deck. She was absolutely delighted when nine students from Falmouth Academy spent part of a day at her home last spring tightening hoses, pruning tree branches, washing Venetian blinds, and removing a small tree from a nearby path where she walks.
     All told, 32 Falmouth Academy students gave Neighborhood Falmouth a big boost that day, Mr. Bohr said.
     Here’s what I think that Neighborhood Falmouth and organizations like it do for their members. They give senior citizens the chance to live with the dignity that has been a part of their lives.  They help senior citizens live like Mary Worth.
 
 NEWS RELEASE: New York Times / Boston Globe - July 9, 2009
Aging in place: Seniors are finding inventive ways to stay in their beloved homes - and hometowns - as long as they can
 By Steve Maas, Globe Correspondent  |  July 9, 2009
 Back in the ’70s, Tamara Bliss and her friends joined baby-sitting pools to take care of one another’s children.
 Today, those children are in their 40s, and Bliss and some of those same friends are pooling their resources to take care of themselves as they head into their senior years.

“There may be good reasons to move to a retirement community,’’ she declares, “but not being able to get that big trash can from the basement to the front walk should not be one of them.’’
 Bliss is the president of Newton at Home, one of a burgeoning number of organizations that aim to help people age in place. They envision a combination of paid and volunteer services to see to the practical, health, and social needs of their members.
 “Most of us have raised our families here. It’s a wonderful community. Why would we want to leave?’’ says Bliss, a native New Yorker who moved to Newton in the late ’60s. “What attracts so many of us is that we’re used to having a lot of say in our lives, and we don’t see why that should be different when we’re 75, 80, 85, or even 90.’’
 Residents in Wellesley, Wayland, and Lincoln are organizing similar intentional communities, or villages, as they are often called. Meanwhile, the not-for-profit Carleton-Willard Homes Inc., which owns a retirement village in Bedford, has established a separate division to coordinate an intentional community serving residents in Bedford, Carlisle, Concord, and Lincoln.
 The communities intend to supplement, not replace, existing services, such as those provided by councils on aging. They aim to fill in the gaps and offer the personal attention and relationships that are lost as family and friends die or move away.
 “This intermediary organization is more like a club, a church, or temple than a government,’’ says Janet Giele, vice president of Wellesley at Home and a retired professor of sociology at the Heller School at Brandeis University. “We are so oriented as a society toward a market, the grocery-shopping approach. You go in and get what you want. The nature of human caregiving is not a grocery-shopping experience. It’s a sense of mutual obligation, of loyalty, of friendship, or a word we never use, love.’’
 Launched by Boston’s Beacon Hill Village in 2002, the aging-in-place movement has spread to some 40 cities and towns across the United States. While the evidence is only anecdotal, it has benefited from the downturn in the economy. Because they have trouble selling their homes, some seniors have put off buying into retirement communities, and ravaged stock portfolios make it difficult for them to afford the fees.
 By contrast, many intentional communities charge well under $1,000 for annual membership. As much as possible, the communities enlist volunteers to provide services, drawing on students, community and church groups, and the members themselves.
 Volunteer networks have the added benefit of bridging generations and giving seniors a new sense of purpose. Seniors may tutor teens, who in turn may teach their mentors how to use the Internet. Younger symphony-goers may give rides to older concert fans. A senior savvy in home repair may serve as a consultant to another retiree who is interviewing contractors. A woman in her 90s who uses a wheelchair may have lost mobility, but she can be enlisted to call five other seniors every morning to make sure they are OK.
 Bliss notes the social advantages as well: “In the course of doing a Newton at Home activity, you find a person who shares a passion you have. It may be bridge, ballet, or travel. Maybe the person you used to do that with is no longer in your life, so you stopped doing it.’’
 Establishing an intentional community typically takes several years.
 “We don’t come with degrees in this arena of health and social care,’’ says Charles Raskin, a retired clothing salesman who is a member of the Independent Living Options task force of Wayland and Lincoln. “We’re learning as we go.’’
 Organizers of the various intentional communities have formed committees to examine what other towns are doing, survey residents, assess volunteer potential, vet vendors, and devise membership packages. They hope to start a pilot program within a year and be fully operational within two years.
 Bliss says the Newton group has some 45 people involved in planning and more than 200 households on its mailing list. Organizers include retired social workers, lawyers, teachers, economists, and IT specialists.
 “I like to think of myself as a talent magnet,’’ says Bliss, who holds a doctorate in organizational studies and worked in management and human resources in state, corporate, and academic settings.
 Bliss credits SOAR55 (Service Opportunities After Reaching 55) with helping Newton at Home develop a business plan and recruit volunteers.
 Mary Ann Cluggish, the president of Wellesley at Home, has long been active in community affairs, both as a founder of the recycling center and as a current library trustee. Cluggish says an essential role of the new group will be to provide a friendly voice on the other side of the line for people looking for help. She notes that dozens of groups in town offer volunteers, but few outside their organizations know about them.
 “There isn’t any coordinating body,’’ she says.

Cluggish stresses that the Wellesley group wants to reach as many seniors as possible.
 “We’ve been told there is a perception that this is only for the affluent,’’ she says. “That’s definitely not the case. It’s for those people who don’t want to move into a retirement community or can’t afford to.’’
 She says seniors frequently raise transportation as a major concern, especially for day surgery.
 “All these daytime procedures have created a whole different environment than used to exist,’’ she says
 Cluggish and Giele head up a 12-person executive committee, which oversees a 25-member task force. About 100 people are on the group’s mailing list. A pair of MBA students from the Heller School will draw up a business plan as a summer project at no cost to Wellesley at Home, which hopes to launch within 18 months.
 While other communities are still in the planning stages, Carleton-Willard at Home is already accepting members and plans to be in operation by fall. While building on the parent organization’s experience in elder care - its roots go back to 1884 - the new division will operate separately with “its own heart and identity,’’ says Stephanie S. Smith, who is coordinating the program until a director is hired.
 Smith, director of public relations for Carleton-Willard Village, says the intentional community is not designed to be a recruitment vehicle for the village, which “has a healthy waiting list.’’
 Like the other intentional communities, it plans a network of neighborhood-based social and wellness programs. It is also vetting service providers and negotiating discounts for members while hoping to draw on volunteers as much as possible. The annual membership fee is $600 for an individual and $850 for a couple.

In Sudbury, the town’s Senior Center already provides many of the services intentional communities plan to offer. Its corps of more than 200 volunteers performs services such as home repairs, visiting housebound seniors, giving rides to medical appointments, and offering legal, medical, and insurance advice. The center has a specialist who offers referrals for contractors, nursing services, even a hairdresser who makes house calls.
 Senior center director Kristin Kiesel estimates the value of volunteer services in the last fiscal year at $200,000. But as impressive as the townwide program is, Kiesel isn’t satisfied.
 “Neighbors helping neighbors really is the way to go,’’ she says.
 Working with groups such as local churches, Kiesel is “looking for a catalyst to come along to help this jell so that in the end we get a community of caring.’’
 Program benefits
 Many intentional communities for senior citizens charge well under $1,000 for annual membership. Typical benefits include:
•A contact to call for a list of vendors who can provide a range of services, from home maintenance and improvement to home companions and 24-hour nursing care.
•Regular wellness activities, such as Tai Chi and yoga, offered at neighborhood locations.
•Social activities, such as weekly potluck dinners, afternoon coffees, book clubs, and trips to museums and arts events.
•Transportation to the grocery store, medical appointments, and social events.
Nearby resources
 To learn more about intentional communities, contact:
•Carleton-Willard at Home: 781-276-1910 or e-mail ssmith@cwathome.org. For residents of Bedford, Carlisle, Concord, and Lincoln.
•Newton: newtonathome.org.
•Sudbury: www.sudbury.ma.us; enter Council on Aging in search box. Or call 978-443-3055.
•Wayland/Lincoln: Call Wayland Council on Aging at 508-358-2990; ask about the Independent Living Options Task Force.
•Wellesley: wellesleyathome.org
 
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