A wide range of services is available to senior citizens through the Aging and Disability Resource Center. Here’s a sampling:
Adult Day Services: activities and assistance for people with physical and/or mental impairments who cannot be left alone for long periods of time, usually at senior centers or other licensed adult day centers.
Durable Medical Equipment: re-usable medical equipment such as hospital beds, canes, walker, chairlifts, wheelchairs and bath safety equipment, to help the individual function in a home environment.
Home-Delivered Meals: nutritionally-balanced meals delivered to the residence of homebound individuals.
Home Modification: improvements like wheelchair ramps to help an individual gain access to his or her home or to move about more freely inside it.
Homemaker: assistance with shopping, meal preparation, light housekeeping and laundry to enable frail older persons or adults with physical disabilities to continue living in their own homes.
Personal care: assistance with personal care (bathing and shaving, for example) as well as homemaker/housekeeping services.
Respite: periodic relief to family members or others who have primary responsibility for caring for an aging or disabled person.
In addition, ADRC case managers can make referrals for hospice care for the terminally ill or for assisted living programs, a homelike setting that provides personal care services and light medical or nursing care while offering the individual more independence than at a nursing home.
The ADRC can also make referrals to state Adult Protective Services officers, who respond to cases of suspected abuse, neglect, or exploitation of adults (aged 18 or over), who have a physical or mental impairment, and who are not living in a long term care facility, and to the state’s long-term-care ombudsman, who investigates and resolves complaints on behalf of residents who live in long-term care facilities as well as those who live in other settings and receive home and community-based long-term care services.
