Rye Moving Forward With Senior Initiatives

– By Arthur Stampleman –

Two new major initiatives mean increased services for Rye seniors. According to Joe Murphy, a senior care manager and coordinator for the ElderServe Safe Center, “The City of Rye is entering a new era of geriatric care on two levels. At one level, individual senior citizens will find it easier to access services for their special needs; at another level, local organizations, leaders and residents will find it easier to share ideas with each other to expand services to seniors.”
The first initiative was over a year in the making, but only became operative recently. On Jan. 31, 2007 the Rye Senior Advocacy Committee (RSAC) wrote ElderServe to “seek an opportunity to develop a public/private partnership to expand services to senior citizens” in Rye. The City of Rye and ElderServe had a Memorandum of Understanding only by March 4, 2008, agreeing ElderServe will serve as a facilitator for Rye seniors without any charges to the city.
Murphy said Elderserve will provide two types of services: “Personal services” helping individual seniors or those who care for them find the service-providers to meet their needs, and “Community services” that are available to community organizations or city departments looking to help seniors.
“Personal services” can help seniors find a lawyer, a home health care aide, a companion, or a driver. ElderServe can be a source of advice on identifying the range of agencies established to serve seniors, such as explaining the difference between the “Certified” agencies that help using Medicare as the provider of its services and a “Licensed” agency that provides home care. Advice is also available on services that can be accessed through county departments and other not-for-profit organizations.
Requests for advice of that kind can be accessed via a call to ElderServe at 683-7530. In most cases an inquiry on where or how to access a particular service can be answered over the phone and involve no cost to the senior or their caretaker. More complex cases, e.g. understanding medical bills; addressing family complications, may require a visit to the senior’s household; an initial visit is free.
Examples of “Community services” are guidance or support in organizing educational programs, organizing medication management programs, keeping statistics on the needs of residents and finding expert resources. Any city organization — house of worship, service organization, Rye Rec Seniors, other seniors group, veterans group or city department — can contact ElderServe for those types of services. ElderServe will also support the City’s efforts through its periodic participation in RSAC meetings.
The second initiative affecting services for seniors is the Westchester County’s Livable Community Connection (LCC) program. As we reported recently, LCC is aimed at helping seniors “age in place” in the County. ElderServe has been designated by Westchester to manage the LCC effort for several communities in this area. Murphy is organizing local meetings with senior advocacy groups to help identify seniors’ resource needs. Murphy reported that he has now formed a task force under the auspices of the RSAC to move this forward in Rye.

Murphy, a Rye resident since 1964 and long active in local public service, says he sees these developments as important progress toward the goal of institutionalizing services that until now have been provided mainly by RSAC volunteers.