By Chris Hurst, WTSP
Members of two dozen churches in Polk County are demanding more help for seniors there. Monday night, they filled Resurrection Catholic Church to unite around a common goal: They want the county to step up and help seniors stay in their homes.
“They need to start doing something for elderly people,” said senior Audrey Oliver. “You have to go through all of these different places and beg and beg and beg, and then a lot of times you still don’t get anything.”
She’s like many seniors in Polk County who don’t need assistance yet but know that day may come soon.
“That is my home, and I want to be there,” she said. “I don’t want to be in a nursing home.”
Polk Ecumenical Action Council for Empowerment or “PEACE” studied senior care in the county and reports more than 2,700 seniors there are on a waiting list for in-home services with the local Agency on Aging called Senior Connection Center, Inc..
“The majority of our membership are senior citizens,” said New Bethel AMC Church pastor Nathan Mugala. “We are concerned about the senior services that are provided in Polk County.”
PEACE says the plight is particularly bad there because during COVID, the county permanently shut down adult day care centers that allowed seniors a place to go during the day while caregivers, usually family, went to work. Officials said the county lets two in-home providers use county offices for free.
“It’s someplace that I know,” said Oliver. “I can get up and walk around in my own home, I now where things are. I don’t have to ask anybody to go and do it for me.”
The group says the county could take a thousand seniors off that wait list for about $5 million. That’s what they plan to ask for when they meet with the county administrator next month.
“What we’re asking is: reinstate those services so we can make sure that all of our seniors are getting the services they need,” said Mugala.
View the original story here.
