Community Resources for the Elderly Paper Example

Introduction

The world's population is growing at an alarming rate, with decreasing death rate. With the decrease in death rates worldwide, the lifespan for many people in different parts of the world increases. As a result, there is a need for establishing more Senior Centers that will ensure elders' social, emotional, physical and intellectual needs are fulfilled. In most cases, adults of fifty years of age and above are eligible to join senior centers (Jung, 2016). Senior centers provide participants to help the aging adults' families with home meal delivery and transportation to hospital facilities. Some of the senior centers also finance economical adult day care schedules that provide management along with social activities that accord intermission to hard-pressed family caregivers (Anne Ziff, 2016).

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Service Description

Essentially, Magnolia senior centers provide liberty for aging adults and play a significant role in the elders' lives allowing elders to create a social network. This is very significant as they meet new friends from different parts of the nation (Anne Ziff, 2016). Senior centers avail services and programs like bingo, dances crafts, fitness, computer classes, birthday luncheons, health screenings, daily meals, among many other services. Some of the senior centers provide outings for the elderly where they can do a live performance and other activities that enable them to socialize once they are out of their houses. Additionally, they get an opportunity to have light exercise with and socialize with other friends. Socializing assist seniors with Alzheimer, depression or dementia (Sandlin, 2004).

According to the acting community service coordinator Fran Guevarra, about sixty to seventy senior citizens are being taken care of by Magnolia centers in South San Francisco (Sandlin, 2004). From the statistics, about twenty-five percent were men while seventy-five percent were made up of females. Families of these elders attending senior centers range between 25,000 dollars to 100,000 dollars. The ethnicity of seniors attending the facility was made up of 44% Chinese, 1% African-American, 10% Latino, 40% Caucasian, and 5% Filipino (Anne Ziff, 2016). There is numerous service offered such as transportation where every member makes six dollars contribution. There is also notary service provision for free. They also provide services such as legal assistance, health insurance counseling, and information for referrals and social security support. Magnolia senior center usually produces a monthly calendar with daily activities or programs plan (Jung, 2016).

The Target Population

Senior centers target a population that constitutes of senior citizens of fifty years of age and above. Magnolia senior centers accept both elders with disabilities and those who are just well. Magnolia center consists of hand full individuals who use a wheelchair. The program set at Magnolia center serves both well and disable ensuring they all equally and effectively receive services offered within the center (Sandlin, 2004). Magnolia enables impaired seniors to be within the society and to prevent immature institutionalization while offering respite, and support community resources for caregivers. Services offered help in improving client's health and their socialization ability as they create a network when they meet different people (Anne Ziff, 2016).

Funding

This program is financed by the City of South San Francisco. It avails funds to the Park and Recreational in which Magnolia Senior Center is a branch of the Park and Recreational. Additionally, all their clients are fifty years of age and are all on Medicare that enables them to have access to health services as it covers doctors' services which is one of the major medical necessities (Jung, 2016). The main reason why they must have Medicare is to relieve the seniors from monetary burdens at a time when illness and chronic or incurable medical conditions sets in, thus increasing the need for care. At such times, providing medical care can always be very expensive (Anne Ziff, 2016).

Management, Administration, and Personnel

The Magnolia Senior Center is a nonprofit agency which means that they do not focus on profits and thus are tax-exempt under 501(c) (7) requirements. Currently, the center is a subsidiary if the "Park and Recreational" of South San Francisco. The center is small centers with only 3 fulltime employees and 4 part-time employees. However, there are times when the Magnolia Senior Center accepts volunteers when the demand for labor increases. Nevertheless, the hospital is currently understaffed as the population is increasing with time. The main job designations include Recreation and Community Services Supervisor, Activity Coordinator, Community Services Coordinator and Office Specialist. All these titles were tied to various compensation packages but the interviewee fluid the topic sensitive to share.

Research Methods

The study was mainly based on an interview of s staff member that may be subject to bias. However, there were secondary data such as repairs in the residential Magnolia senior centers that provided additional I information such as revenue and expenses, the number of residents in the Magnolia senior centers, the types of services offered and other information beyond the scope of this paper. My main recommendation to the Magnolia senior centers is to have a customer rating sheet for customer feedbacks. The customer rating would be important to both the potential customers and the residential Magnolia senior centers as this is the only way to determine the areas they need to adders to improve the quality of care and patient outcome.

Conclusion

One of the main problems facing most senior centers and nursing homes is understaffing. With the high number of elderly people in the country. The advancement in science and technology has increased the life expectancy, while medical reforms have moored the quality of medical care citizens get. This has contributed to the demographic shift as the elderly people in America are many. Today, few of the elderly people die at 76 years of age which means that the elderly homes will have more people than before. Nurse's homes and elderly venires should increase their staff numbers to adequately cater for the needs of the residents of those homes.

The other problem that will face the residential homes is underfunding. Most of the government funded homes face an acute shortage of funds. The residential homes need more staff and resources that cannot be adequately catered for with the funds currently allocated. A new funding scheme should be I implemented that involves private and public findings. For example, in addition to state funding, relatives of the elderly admitted into the residential homes should contribute to the kitty to help in running those homes. I would suggest to Magnolia senior centers to start making long-term employment plans for more employees to be trained and developed for future changes in demand for professional care at Magnolia senior centers

Reference

Ziff, A. (2016). Leading Groups in a Senior Center. Group, 40(4), 343. Doi: 10.13186/group.40.4.0343

Jung, Y. (2016). A Study on Community Senior Citizen Center as the Senior Health Care Center Vitalization Plan Measures. Journal Of Korean Clinical Health Science, 4(4), 680-688. Doi: 10.15205/kschs.2016.12.31.680

Sandlin, D. (2004). Community resources for the elderly. Journal Of Perianesthesia Nursing, 19(6), 428-429. Doi: 10.1016/j.jopan.2004.09.004