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April 2007 Newsletter In This Issue:
I am pleased to note that many of the items in this Newsletter are about senior empowerment. Empowerment is the goal of DFTA's Grandparent Caregiver initiatives, the City's new Carrier Alert program, Americorps*VISTA members working with senior centers, and classes teaching people to locate health information on the web. Our efforts to educate seniors and their families about health risks during heat emergencies are also aimed at enabling seniors to take charge of their health and safety. And our joint health information outreach initiatives with the Generations Plus/Northern Manhattan network of HHC hospitals have a similar purpose. Empowered seniors defy the ageist stereotype that seniors are victims of aging. Next month, Older Americans Month, DFTA will be celebrating aging at our annual Age in Action event, further testimony to the vitality and relevance of empowered seniors. Please email or write to me at any time. I look forward to hearing from you. Also, call 311 to learn about the Department's services for seniors or read more at nyc.gov/aging.
Mayor Bloomberg Announces Carrier Alert: Letter Carriers to Look After Seniors To participate in the program, seniors and people with disabilities should call 311 or download a registration kit available online at nyc.gov/aging. Upon acceptance of their application, participants will receive a sticker or a magnet for the interior of their mailbox. They will be instructed to cover the sticker if they are to be away from home for an extended period of time. Eligible Carrier Alert applicants must have an external mailbox or an apartment building mail bank where a USPS letter carrier deposits mail. Though the idea of a carrier alert program was conceived in New York City in the mid-1970's, the National Carrier Alert program was created in 1982 under President Ronald Reagan. Long dormant in New York City, it is now being revived through this collaborative effort of the Department, the United States Postal Service, the Letter Carriers Union and the Mayor's office for People with Disabilities.
DFTA and Community Partners Gear Up for Summer Heat Emergencies "Each year, more people die from excessive heat events than from hurricanes, tornados, floods and earthquakes combined, and older people are particularly vulnerable," Commissioner Mendez-Santiago told a heat emergency preparation conference hosted by DFTA, April 11th. Over two hundred representatives from senior centers, case management agencies and DFTA's other community partners attended the conference, which focused on practical steps organizations should take now to ready themselves and seniors in their communities for summer 2007 heat emergencies. Last year over 270 cooling centers responded to the two extreme heat events. The Conference reviewed the impact of cooling centers and ways centers in the cooling center network should be gearing up for next summer. Conference participants heard from senior center directors about the preparations and practices that were most helpful to them and their communities during last year's heat waves." In addition to preparing cooling centers, seniors and their families need to be educated about heat dangers, the Commissioner pointed out. "No one should be complacent," he continued. "It needs to be common practice across this City for New Yorkers to check in on their older neighbors when summer temperature climbs and for seniors to stay in contact with relatives, friends or neighbors."
Building Trust Step-by-Step Among Russian Grandparent Caregivers
Like other immigrants, older Russians face language and culture barriers to accessing services, Ms. Gorbachinsky reports. Many distrust authority and believe no one outside the family can help. Loss colors their emotional landscape. Grandparents raising their grandchildren face particular challenges understanding and negotiating the school system and child welfare support, in addition to dealing with parenting issues they are unprepared for. Shame at having to step in for their grandchildren's biological parents is common and many feel isolated and stigmatized by their age. "I have had to proceed very carefully," Ms. Gorbachinsky says. "These are very private people. The idea of sharing family problems is alien." DFTA's Grandparent Resource Center has helped to develop and network 22 grandparent caregiver self-help support groups. In some communities, support groups have joined in coalitions that organize events for caregivers and their families such as outings and other recreational activities. Read more about the GRC at nyc.gov/aging.
Stanley Isaacs and Union Settlement's Senior Centers Pilot New Health Empowerment Classes
"I'm driving my daughter crazy looking for things," said one of the students. "But that's a good thing and now at least I know how to look." Other class members chimed in, citing their newfound ability to call up Web sites with health information and identify which ones are reliable. Although some computer experience is a requirement for participating in the course, demand has exceeded space since the class is kept small so that students can help each other. "This class has generated a lot of excitement and enthusiasm," said Maria Alejandro, Union Settlement's Director of Senior Services. "The seniors in the class want more classes and their friends want to take the course too." The project, which targets parents of young children as well as seniors, is supported by a grant to Columbia University and the New York Academy of Medicine from the National Library of Medicine.
Directors of more than 40 senior centers in Northern Manhattan and the Bronx have been meeting with representatives of local HHC hospitals to brainstorm and plan together how to improve access to health information and services, benefits and entitlements in the largely immigrant and low-income communities they serve. Work is already under way on two Senior Wellness Fairs scheduled for June, one for Harlem residents at Jefferson Park and one in the South Bronx at St. Mary's Park. Another initiative will use the taxi limousines favored by community residents for outreach. The cabs will have special boxes installed that hold informational materials riders can take with them. Information about ACCESS NYC, the electronic benefits screening tool, and a brochure describing DFTA's services will be among the outreach materials distributed through the cabs. This collaboration between centers and hospitals grew out of information sharing meetings between DFTA Commissioner Mendez-Santiago and the Generations+/Northern Manhattan Health Network, comprised of Metropolitan Hospital, Lincoln Medical and Mental Health, and Harlem Hospital. Among the ideas being generated by the ongoing meetings are a greater role for the senior centers in hospital discharge planning for older clients, and a greater role for the hospitals in health promotion activities at the senior centers. Also under discussion is how hospitals and senior centers can work together to increase asthma and diabetes awareness in northern Manhattan and Bronx communities, where the diseases are prevalent. Said Iris Pacheco, Associate Director of the Community Health Education Outreach Program for both Metropolitan and Lincoln Hospital, "I am so pleased at the way we are able to give out information related to senior health and how the senior centers are working with us on this needed effort."
Nine Manhattan Centers Get Americorps*Vista Volunteer Resources from DFTA
Jayanthi Reddy, Patricia Cooper-Small and Desiree Tabor each work with their own group of three centers. "We see our role as a catalyst, working with the center director to bring out the leadership potential of center members themselves," says Ms. Reddy. "Although encouraging community residents to volunteer at the center is one of the project's aims, it has become increasingly apparent to us that center members need to realize that they themselves are resources," Ms. Cooper-Small added. Senior center members are not only good sources of volunteer power, but the VISTA Project Associates, as they are called, are finding that seniors are also good ambassadors to their communities. Ms. Tabor observes that, "when members let their friends and family know that their skills would be welcome at the center, people who would not otherwise become involved respond, and wind up thoroughly enjoying working with seniors and contributing to their community. Further, when this friend or family member is a senior, the center may gain an additional member. Everyone benefits!" Centers participating in the project's first year are: Corsi, University Settlement, Church on the Hill Older Adults Luncheon Club, Carver, ARC XVI Ft. Washington, Good Companions, Leonard Covello and Central Harlem Senior Center. The VISTA program was created when President Kennedy signed the Economic Opportunity Act of l964 and declared a "war on poverty." Today, the Corporation of National and Community Service (CNCS) administers the program, and adheres to the goal of eliminating poverty by strengthening non-profit and community organizations across the United States.
Program Spotlight: United Hindu Cultural Council Senior Center
When the number of people attending grew too large to be accommodated in her home, Ms. Jamoona began planning and working for a senior center that, like the informal gatherings in her living room, would meet the special needs of these elders who felt linguistically and culturally isolated in their new country. Now part of New York City's senior center network, the Center serves between 100 and 160 persons daily and has a registration of more than 1,000, drawing older immigrants from every borough. Responding to member preferences, UHCC Senior Center was the first center to offer daily vegetarian meals in New York City. It also offers a variety of cultural and recreational programs, social events, and activities that nourish body, mind and spirit from yoga to blood pressure checks and from Indian music, dance and movies to English as a Second Language, voter registration drives and assistance with benefits and entitlements. Particularly popular with men are twice weekly poetry sessions, where the custom of communal singing of treasured poems prevails. The secret of the Center's success is family involvement. Ms. Jamoona is considered part of everyone's family, attending family birthdays and weddings, visiting in their homes, and sometimes participating in six to eight family or community functions a day. She actively encourages family members to "come and see" the Center. In fact, this is how Ms. Jamoona subverts a cultural bias against senior centers prevalent in Hindi culture. This bias is based on the view that centers are where older people 'hang out' and vacation. "In our culture," Mrs. Jamoona says, "men and women don't hang out. Even some of the seniors' modern children hold this view. So I invite them to the Center and I say, 'See, we have yoga, music, dancing, there are positive activities going on.' And they agree and not only drop their objections, they become our supporters!" Reflecting on her immersion in the communities she serves, she adds, "That's how it works, so that's what it takes."
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Before a packed audience of seniors and guests at Jackie Robinson Senior Center, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg launched Carrier Alert, April 4th. A voluntary program for seniors and people with disabilities, Carrier Alert builds on the natural relationship many letter carriers develop with people on their route. Participants in Carrier Alert can choose to have their mail carrier notify 311 and the Department when the carrier notices anything out of the ordinary, such as accumulations of mail that might signal that a person is unable to get out and about. Once alerted, the Department will notify emergency contacts, or arrange for a social worker to visit if necessary.
Brooklyn's older Russian immigrants who face the additional challenge of raising grandchildren recently learned skills and strategies to help them cope at a two-session empowerment training course presented by the Department's Grandparent Resource Center and Dr. Carol Cox of Fordham University. The Department is encouraging participants in the training to form a support group similar to other grandparent support groups across the City. "Grandparents and other kin raising children in these Russian immigrant communities have a dire need for information, supports, services, and to know they are not alone," says Russian-speaking Natalie Gorbachinsky of the GRC, who has been doing outreach and organizing work in these communities for more than a year. 
Eyes glued to their computer screens at Corsi Senior Center, six students searched MedlinePlus for information about the causes and treatment of asthma. Members of Corsi and James Weldon Johnson Senior Centers, they were participating in an experimental five-session course to teach inner-city seniors how to find health information on the Internet. The experimental course was also offered at Stanley Isaacs Senior Center. Lessons and tutorial workbooks developed for the pilot are now available in both English and Spanish at 
Since many centers do not have the resources to hire lots of activities staff, three Americorps*VISTA members have been spending the year working with nine centers in East and Central Harlem, Washington Heights and lower Manhattan to develop and enhance sustainable volunteer-led programming at their sites. 
The United Hindu Cultural Council Senior Center in Queens is a cultural community for hundreds of older New Yorkers from Caribbean and South Asian countries. The Center took shape close to twenty years ago in the living room of founder Chan Jamoona, whose mother - a neighborhood leader - was one of the seventeen immigrant grandmothers who used to gather there while their grandkids were in school.