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PENNSYLVANIA: Rural Areas Of State Need More Adult Day Care, Study Says BY REID COPLOFF / REGIONAL STAFF WRITER 11/06/2004 Adult day services are the area's best kept secret, says Mary O'Donnell. Mrs. O'Donnell, a director for Telespond Senior Services, sees the two service centers maintained by her group, in Scranton and Carbondale, as an underused aid to the community, housing only 45 elderly residents daily, when they could hold 75. A trio of local professors agrees. Janet Melnick of Penn State Worthington Scranton, Heather Shanks- McElroy of Keystone College and Doris Chectotka-McQuade of Marywood University, recently completed a study that calls for 321 more adult day services in 48 rural Pennsylvania counties. An adult day service is a service for the elderly, which typically operates on weekdays during normal business hours. It can offer a variety of care for people with Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, dementia and depression, said Mrs. O'Donnell. Services provided can include physical, occupational and speech therapy, family and individual counseling and financial planning, Dr. Shanks-McElroy said. Although Lackawanna is not one of the 48 counties classified as rural by the state, Dr. Melnick said since there are many rural areas in the county, many of the same problems apply locally. The greatest barrier for rural elderly to take part in these services, said Dr. Shanks-McElroy, is transportation. Much of the rural areas of Lackawanna County are far from the four adult day centers in the county. The biggest problem for the rural elderly is isolation, she said. Currently 50 percent of the elderly who use the Telespond Senior adult day services live with their children, Mrs. O'Donnell said. For a senior who lives alone or with other seniors, it can be more difficult to get to a service. Another problem is cost, Dr. Melnick said. Her study, sponsored by the state's Center for Rural Pennsylvania, calls for more state funding to make the service affordable. Telespond's service is $48 a day, Mrs. O'Donnell said, although financial help is available through the United Way and the county Area Agency on Aging. "What's there is good, but there need to be more," Dr. Melnick said. "There needs to be more advertising and there needs to be a more coordinated effort to get people there." Most people, Dr. Melnick said, don't know about adult day services, until they begin to actively look for one for a loved one. SOURCE: The Scranton Times Tribune, PA http://tinyurl.com/48a5v * * * Murray Charters <[log in to unmask]> Please place this address in your address book Please purge all others Web site: Parkinsons Resources on the WWWeb http://www.geocities.com/murraycharters ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn