Funding falls short for seniors

It was not uncommon during the Great Depression to see long lines of unemployed workers waiting for bread and soup. Today, in Massachusetts there are several thousand elders lined up waiting for home care—but you won’t see them on the streets.
Instead, these seniors are in their homes, unable to get the help they need to avoid costlier nursing home care. The home care budget has been slashed this coming year, and cases will fall to a level lower than they were in 1980.
This is happening not just in Massachusetts, but all around the nation. Seniors do not fall into the “too big to fail” category, so they are not being offered a bailout package. They did not speculate with their savings, so there will be no troubled asset relief program for them.
It is a sad state of affairs when the state and federal governments cannot figure out how to prioritize their spending to ensure that no one goes into an institution who could have been kept at home.

Dale Mitchell
Executive Director, Ethos
Jamaica Plain

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