Senior News May, 2004 Vol. 25. No. 5

 

Published by the Humboldt Senior Resource Center in Eureka, California. HSRC is a non-profit community-based organization offering services for senior citizens, multi-generational families and caregivers.

What would life be like without the Senior Resource Center?

HSRC invites you to celebrate 30 years of service to Humboldt County

Senior Resource Center celebrates 30 years

Unique newspaper hast been published for 23 years by HSRC

Home base for a writer

Where are they now? Staff and volunteers have made HSRC strong

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Congratulations at 30. The center has been and is a great asset to the community.

Look around you. Take time to notice how many services are available to seniors in this county. Consider also the many additional services, such as home health care, that began at the center and moved on out into the community. Take a good look at the number, variety and geographical locations. Think about the services you have used, the activities you have participated in, the services you will need one day.

Now for the next step - think about none of the services or activities being here. Not one!

That's the way it was in 1975 when the center began with a staff of two and a telephone. Alas, there were no services to give information about. The phone was silent for days.

Then the grant writing began. We reached out to many sources, especially the Dept. of Aging in Sacramento and local governments. The response was wonderful. The meal program, legal services, in-home assistance (which became home health care), adult day care, case management - a veritable frenzy of expansion that lasted more than ten years.

Hundreds of people were involved: a dedicated staff, city government staffs, partnerships with cooperating agencies, private foundations, and, of course, volunteer and participating seniors. It took all of them to make it happen.

It also took money - lots of it. It still does. Unfortunately, the needed funds are shrinking. The federal government is squeezing the states, the states are squeezing the cities, and all of them are making "hard choices" at the expense of those on the lowest rungs of the social order.

Yes, we do need to set priorities. We can't just say, "give me mine and everyone else be damned." But do we really need to put a man on Mars when he can't find a doctor for his father? Do we have a responsibility to pay for our own services when we have the money to do so? If no one pays taxes, where will the money come from?

I've been keeping an eye on HSRC since my official retirement as executive director in 1987. For the next five years I worked less than half time setting up the fundraising department. Mostly my husband and I were having a wonderful time traveling around the world. Each time I came home I could see that quality services were hanging in there even while changing and under increasing stress for funds.

No one knows better than I that without adequate funding, we could lose our cost-effective local senior services. We could find ourselves back in 1975 with a telephone that doesn't ring because there is nothing we can offer. Think about that.

Anne Weiss of Bayside was one of the founding "mothers" of the Humboldt Senior Resource Center and its first director until 1987. She also wrote a monthly column in Senior News for most of those years.