please silence your phones if you haven't already we depreciate it as you know this forum is intended to help us obtain more information about aging related issues in belmont so we look forward to hearing from our panel of experts and from you during the question and answer period my name is bev freeman i'm a member of the belmont league of women voters which is significant role in meeting basic needs a study in belmont by gerontology research institute from u mass boston involving many focus groups here gave us hints about current problems including that the affordable housing stock is insufficient for older adults in belmont and  elders move from belmont because they cannot afford to live here the social network for elders left behind shrinks so we may discover that expanding that network in certain beneficial ways is very important the discussions during the study also showed that belmont has a commitment to inclusion and respect so hopefully we can identify how we can go about living this every day mules tonight's moderator served as general counsel as the state executive office of elder affairs for over twenty five years and he's currently president of are friends of the council on aging board a c e o a member and a town meeting member so many thanks to our panel for speaking to us tonight the belmont media center for providing this to the community through on demand viewing in the future and thank you to all of you for coming out on this cold night thank you and thank you to the belmont league of women voters for sponsoring this evening's forum the pharmacy entitled to visit a crucial time to expand supports and social services for belmont seniors behalf of older adults in belmont are staffed collaborates with other town departments and others as well as community service providers to enhance the quality of life for seniors the seaway response to their concerns seeking to educate the community at large about the needs of older adults while designing promoting in implementing services and programs that enhance their general wellbeing one of these programs is social work services recently there's been an increasing concern over present and future supports and social services of older persons and velma belmont is an aging community with according to the town clerk as of four o'clock this afternoon twenty four thousand seven hundred and fifty six residents the information you get in the age friendly belmont report  already those statistics for residents is already two years old over forty percent of the town's residents are over age fifty and over twenty five percent of the town's residents are over the age of sixty over thirteen percent three thousand two hundred and twenty eight people are over the age of seventy in belmont as the population ages concerns about seniors quality of life and ability to afford staying in their homes has been a focus of attention tonight's forum focuses on vulnerable elders the most vulnerable live at risk of losing their homes on account of mental health issues including hoarding unsafe housing conditions and complex social and financial conditions public safety officials have been meeting regularly since two thousand and fourteen to address these problem problems through the town's safe and healthy housing planning group several members of that panel or here with us tonight our distinguished panel this evening includes belmont council an aging director novena vogel james mechanize ik assistant chief of police of belmont can gardner captain of the belmont fire department jackie martin director of the belmont housing authority and susan powell that a social worker experienced with the geriatric population and form out this evening will be that each panel member will speak for about five minutes to explain their departments or individual interactions with at risk senior town residents susan polit will then ask questions to panel members and elaborate on what was reported that would be of interest to the audience audience members please hold your questions there will be a q and a period following the panel presentations if you have a question please go at that time please go up to the microphone if you're not able to go to the microphone or bring a portable microphone to you in your seat susan will then wrap up with key points made during that discussion and recommendations for action steps drawn from panel members and the audience tonight now i'd like to present know of an involved all our director of the belmont council on aging thank you joel i too wish to thank the league of women voters for sponsoring this forum and for bringing attention to an issue that is of great concern to us that the council on aging i'll focus my remarks on what services are already in place what have been emerging needs that the c e o way has identified over the past ten years how they dovetail with the needs identified in the age friendly belmont report that there freeman mentioned and what gaps in services the sea away identifies in two thousand and nineteen perhaps many in the community see this facility as one where lots of fun programming takes place but this center was built for a very serious purpose and to address very fundamental social needs of older adults the fitness programs organized and unorganized games memoir writing language classes arts oriented classes singing and dance groups all have health and mental social health benefits we also have programs that are explicitly designed to address social and mental health concerns among them are r g close during classes a bereavement support group a living alone group a caregiver support group a new arts therapy program as well as numerous one time precent ations on a host of topics that help older adults stay independent safe and enjoying quality of life in their homes transportation service enables anyone over the age of sixty access to their health related appointments food shopping programs at this center as well as other destinations that directly impact daily functioning the  o way has a social work team that helps with individuals and families in crisis on staff are part time social worker and currently two simmons graduate social work in the director but also serve but also i'm a social worker i supervise the team and serve as backup social worker our volunteer coordinator also provides social services she says with applications for fuel assistance she manages the senior tax work of program whereby eligible seniors can set up to it can get one thousand five hundred dollars a year off their real estate taxes if they work for a town department at the state's minimum wage she also assists with getting people home repair services and snow shoveling assistance all these programs and services are supported by the town and outside grants donations and participant fees the state's executive office of elder affairs funds some c e o s salaries and programs through an annual renew grant the exact amount is determined by the state house each year there are a variety of other services provided by the state and federal government they are administered through an agency called spring well spring well provides the lunch program here the center home delivered meals home care services protective services for seniors at risk or facing abuse a smattering of outreach services and caregiver education like the c l way spring will provides information and referral services to older adults and their families despite this impressive array of services there are many in the community who struggle some of their struggles are captured in the age friendly belmont report mentioned previously a report by the you mass gerontology institute a study where participants and dentist fight a variety of needs i've seen that all the copies we have available are already gone you may still sign up at the end if you want a hard copy otherwise you can go online to our website w w w dot beach street dot au argy and weed it online the report highlights the need to address social isolation it also brings attention to the issue of residen who feel economically in secure and are concerned about having to move out of town we at the c e o way hear these concerns repeatedly our social work team assists by finding financial and social resources helping to access benefits that people are entitled to finding housing alternatives and more the c e o it also helps with a number of older adults living in seriously situations these cases have increase in the past ten years the housing the safe and healthy housing planning group that joel mentioned was formed because a recognition of these complex cases that require multiple disciplines and departments to address in addition to members of the panel who are here today the departments the health department and community development are also part of that planning group from day one the group identified a need for an additional social worker who can explicitly focus on these types of cases i applied for grants but it's difficult getting funders watertown has a full time social work at the c e o way and another one for the town as a whole and did not decide to partner on a grant for regionally shared social worker because they have more robust social work presence most of the surrounding c always have a full time social worker at least so we have less social work capacity in comparison we definitely still view having an additional social worker as the need for now and in the future thank you i think you know now we call on the assistant chief of police of the town of belmont thank you so we do we do a number of things with senior citizens one of the i have to say  though st of all lieutenant christian dailly who was a community services officer is usually the one that spearheads this these types of incidents and she does an outstanding job and is very dedicated  we do education fraud identity theft financial exploitation and we've worked with the mass bankers association local banks and spring wells financial developments or development department and when we work on the education we also have an officer who handles strictly contractor scams when people when contractors will come in you know they say i need five hundred dollars up front and then you don't ever see the person again we have an officer that can handle those cases for you and oftentimes you know senior citizens will fall victim to that and then the way that we come in contact most with people who are in need or in service is when we investigate cases after there's been a crime or we're doing a well being check and we've had the worst case that i know of was two years ago we had a gentleman who lost five hundred and fifty thousand dollars  through scams and we were able to eventually get him in assisted living working whispering wells financial service department but you know this is when i started twenty years ago there were a couple of what i call a progressive department so i know dan visit was one and i think cambridge and they had they had seen that this was going to be a problem and they had developed offices who handled just you know senior citizen complaints and now basically every department does and i give you an example times have changed we had a as an elderly resident belmont who a year ago was was missing and this is how you usually get involved he was missing and he was eventually located in new york city by the new york city transit police were able to get him back here and you know it get some family and get some help unfortunately just last week we got a call from  auburn hospital that this same individual had got on a train and gone to philadelphia showed up in a hospital in philadelphia and now he was back at mount been in mount auburn was calling us asking us what to do now fifteen or twenty years ago we were said we don't know what to do you know but now because of the way it was set up and the way we're organized and we have all these connections with or another groups that he was able to contact spring well and get this gentleman some services that that he needs and we're trying to work on a plan with him and those are just things that you know when you think about you one always says i don't want to say tonight we're doing things that  you know social work work that should be done this is pretty well accepted what we do and we do a lot of it and is not a set it would be nice to have a little bit more resources in town that we could turn local residents over to because it's important you try to you try to know everybody's name and everybody who has problems so they can be solved like that and you know have to explain it would be easy to pick up a phone and say to a social worker you know m and we kind of tackle cases that are brought to our attention number of different ways through my department it's usually when we get called unfortunately for medical call a water call something that gets into the home unfortunately for us it's difficult for us too get into homes it's not like driving around town trying to get in and was home but like the health department who's not here represented but they have a little better success so we ride the coattails to come in i have gone on numerous inspections with the health department for hoarding in situations of that in our biggest contribution is to make sure the safe is fire is the clutter and the hoarding goes but also smoke detectors carbon monoxide detectors and i'm going to speak about that a little more because there's another  individual in my department a firefighter who runs the safety program for children but now we also have a program called seniors safe and the only one i was able to really get a contact with was watertown next door and they're pretty active also it is seen as safe program so what they do is we have a smoke detector program we try to identify people that might not have the means to purchase smoke detectors or monoxide detectors and we do have a supply of them it is limited we're able to file for grants currently right now when i do my inspections i am document you meant in all these inspections i go on because that helps us when we go to the state and say can we get some you know can we get some more donations of smoke detectors myself  what i mean i feel it just panel tonight is explaining to you what we all do but we're all going to fall back on now but need help in the work aspect of it we need the boots on the ground we run across it when when companies go to houses they write a letter to either the health department to myself can you follow up with mrs jones if there's a but then eventually they don't want to help anymore so if you have friends relatives anything that are in a situation like that it would help if you talk to them to help themselves so the senior they look like this and there's a form you fill out and actually goes on your refrigerator that helps us tremendously i believe has i only brought a few but we have plenty if anyone wants one just let me know at the end so we deal with that and then by monthly fight a fight of honor comes here to the senior center discusses a number of things electrical safety emergency preparedness cooking safety smoking safety s how we you know that's about all week can do what we do do again we like to be notified if we can but it's very rare that we get notified by the person that needs help unfortunately i know that sounds terrible but it's usually by going on calls me getting an e mail from a lieutenant mostly on an e mail they e mail the health department say you know we think this person needs help so it's just a witness if you let us know we're pretty good at it and you know we'll get somebody the help they need to get their house will definitely get smoke detectors up i mean evening my name is jackie i'm the executive director of the belmont housing authority i joined the agency in december of two thousand and seventeen so i've been with belmont for a little over a year now a mission is to provide safe sanitary independent living units and housing our portfolio consist of two hundred and fifty four units one hundred are family units consisting of fifty two bedroom and fifty three bedroom units and the remaining one hundred and fifty four conventional public housing units are senior disabled housing of that eighty six dollars and a half percent are for seniors and thirteen and a half percent are for our younger stabled of eighty units and only forty of them are on the st floor and the other forty are on the nd floor with about sixteen dollars to twenty dollars stairs which can be a significant hardship on seniors as they are aging especially getting groceries have stairs not quite as many as sherman gardens but still quite significant the laundry in those buildings are on the same floor as the units which is at least helpful whereas in german gardens even  storage is a significant walk and again stairs we're considered a medium agency we have a five member board four of which are elected and one which is appointed to by the which is the point we have an administrative staff of three full time and one have part time person as well as three main and staff were very busy and agency we have significant task with limited resources were tasked with meeting many of the reporting requirements of  regulatory body which is the department of housing and community development and legislative requirements in addition to preserving our important asset of public housing and the physical structure we work closely with town departments including the police department fire and coun aging as well as other town committees and housing drastic cetera we hold regular meetings with our residents and residents are reminded to often to notify us if they are any of their neighbors may need some help and we do our best to connect them to the services that would be helpful unfortunately a lot of times we're more in a reactive situation than a proactive situation and by the time that we're getting involved with the resources that are available within our budget unfortunately we are not able to bring on a service court meter which a lot of housing authorities have when they either have more federal housing or federal housing units or are just a little bit bigger in size  so in order to accommodate that we have to refer to the council on aging in spring well in other local agencies as well we were lucky enough fortunate enough to be awarded by the mount auburn hospital a grant for two thousand dollars in our application we asked for money in order to help fight our battle isolation and depression amongst our seniors which is a real problem for our residents and in our housing authorities we hold regular meetings and we've had tenet daily come and speak on friday we've had some other speakers come in we're going to use this as an opportunity to create more coffee times more conversations more help and get hopefully have residents get to know each other even a little bit more and really have people help connect with each other given that a lot of our seniors end up needing our st floor unit at some point they often have to transfer units which can be very disruptive but also sometimes that means you're also going to change the development that you're living in so you could be at sherman gardens and have a nice support system you're all looking out for each other and then the next thing you know you're over at waverly oaks and you may not know as many people and it can be very disruptive the board of commissioners also recently hired consultants to evaluate whether we can do some redevelopment over at sherman gardens to address the need for additional housing units as well as to see if there's a way that we can create more accessible units and more units where residents are going to be able to age in place a little bit better they're not doing any design work but the hope is that we may be able to provide better housing options for seniors with mobility issues  and again we've identified the need for social services coordinator to assist our residents in connecting with services in the community we also have a very significant waiting us across the united cross the state of massachusetts there is a housing crisis in massachusetts and as every day seniors continue to age that becomes even more and more critical so with additional residents support more units and work this ability we really hope to be able to make an impact in helping belmont retired social worker i had a career of forty five years working in hospitals health centers in communities working primarily with an aging population and with  the families of the aged and i'm here tonight to help you examine the issue of do we need more social services in belmont at this time i think you've heard from this panel that they're doing an incredible job of really trying to meet comprehensive needs of older people but that there are some cracks which w address which do need to be  think it's my job to really ask each of the panelists where they see those gaps and how how they feel filling those needs would be best when overall what i've heard people say is that if someone comes to the attention of an agency these agencies are really ready to meet the needs and to address them but that there are many people who don't come to the attention of people who have the resources to help them and i would like to ask nava st of all how do you see that the un the people who don't come to beach street how do you see them being identified and  what kinds of needs do you see them as having well that's a yeah the ones who come are the ones who already have some sense  of their human need to socially engage which is a help so it's a real challenge although there are many people who even come to the center who you know who may not good knowledge a lot of needs that they have i think in belmont we have a population of seniors who are very proud who you know don't tend to they don't like handouts they don't you know they've been independent they they are won't necessarily reach out for help so it's incumbent upon us to do the outreach and we do to some degree but with a strapped social services team we will address those needs that we see front and center and you know if we if we get reports from police and fire and health you know situations at home those will be the st to respond that we'll respond to but there are there are people who suffer in silence and we may not know those people and and there may be people in housing i remember years ago spring well did have funds to bring in a social worker once a week and a lot of needs were identified that when we were able to pull services they no longer had the funds so they couldn't do that so that that stopped so it's a real challenge and we we rely on families and neighbors and you know belmont is wonderful with neighbors who really care and we get a lot of calls if there were increased social work services available how might that mitigate that problem well we'd have more time for that for us or the social worker to to reach out in ways that we can't right now so we would the communities who will make routine colds or you know people who come to our attention maybe marginally will have the time and energy to say you know maybe we'll make that extra call to find out what's really going on with this person that right now will say well you know this person seems to be ok there may be an issue but for all intents and purposes we we would have the opportunity to go that extra step to find out maybe there are deeper needs and that's consistent with what you said about the man who wandered with us that you would not know about him unless he showed up in an emergency room is that correct that's right is there what do you see as a benefit of having enhanced social services well i can tell you that called me a few weeks ago and was curious about how many calls we went on with you know senior citizens and people that were in need of services and because of the way that we recorded record management system it's almost impossible to do that take a very long time but i said not where i can tell you off my head i said and i'm not even all responding and i know this i said there's an address and i don't have the exact number but i say i think we've been there fifteen times in three weeks and  you know for our offices to respond you know this person is in a type of a crisis where they believe that someone has come in their house almost every day and so our office is respond in you know the real to help helpful so it sounds as if you come across in your following up on these calls about intruders or calls about people wandering you come across psychiatric problems or or causes the most kind of concern is you know were these these just these incidents just don't happen you know between eight o'clock and four o'clock monday through friday so it's tough it's tougher on the weekends and it's tougher on you know it's tougher to spousal issues and i know that as you're dealing with an aging population people often just be out of frustration or out of fizzy out of physical limitations sometimes  are in situations which are overwhelming and is that something that you see in your work from time to time we do when you know especially with people suffering from all simon is that you know it's very you know you see how difficult is on the family members and you know we have in our record management system which you know if somebody goes to a certain address say twenty two you know q street we have been our record management system the offices know you know might be somebody suffering from critical disease also for the fire department they we we share the same dispatch so they know you know we'll have in the cab notes if you know m walks away and you find him call his sister who lives in a son that lives in new york city and it's very difficult it's difficult on the family in we will find the person often times maybe they'll go to the hospital maybe we'll bring them home and the office is a kind of you know say no how long do i stay here you know do i is it ok to leave him and they don't necessarily have someone who can either take over the emotional piece or consult with them about how to handle this so that might be something that would be helpful and mentioning hoarding and clutter and is a mental health issue yes which people don't understand you have a hobbyist like to collect things there's a fine line between that in it being an illness like the chief said our follow up is very limited we don't have the reason i mean myself personally i run the five venture bureau so i run everything from issuing permits reading plans doing inspections and i have assistance from a lieutenant but he's a training lieutenant so his time is limited to give to me so i get to do all that and then so for follow ups of pretty much nonexistent except for the fact that you know manipulation call it what you want but we'll do what we have to do to get what we need to get for the benefit of the individual as was stated to my left a lot of it's reactionary is we go for a medical and we see what we see and we react to that unfortunately as the chief stated you go places more and more and more and up and our response these places is usually of the medical capacity in it's that's the way and it's a way in but unfortunately the more you go the it's their health is not getting better in and you want to give people dignity and you want to give them help and you want to put the health department the c e o way they do a fantastic job but i  just know the c e o way for example they get the follow ups i mean it's hard for the police it's hard for us to do actual follow ups we do our best i you know i do my best in the  gentleman the fire fight a fire fight of mana is fantastic he you know anytime i've reached out to him just because but so it's basically just me and him not that everybody else in the palm is not aware not that they don't report  have sensory deprivation they can't see they can't hear they are more at risk for falls and they have the clutter or they have the hoarding which makes it more difficult for them to have mobility don't forget if we don't go there or the police go there on a call there's a lot of people out there they're probably could use our services and sometimes if fortunate enough as you stated to have great neighbors or family  know that concerned sometimes it's hard for family they don't live around here they live out of state in you know their guilt kicks in but i mean we do what we can do for people but do you think if you had more social services it would give you more support and it absolutely would give us more support and how do you see what what would you need in that way well the other departments like the housing in the c e o way they could probably speak better to they would be the ones that would more or less be able to do the follow ups that that i feel that we just can't get to because we don't have the funding or the staffing to do it if they had the people that i'm not trying to pass the buck and say we just sent them an e mail forget about it i mean yeah i mean because i go i go out as much as as much as i can whenever i'm called to say can we go you know do an inspection i make my schedule work to go do it because it is gratifying but to reach out in to follow up i think follow ups of the biggest the biggest i mean how we reach out to to get the ball rolling but it's you know proud people i heard that said dignity some people it's very hard for people ask for help and  it's ironic we go on cause and we see a lot of people that we grew up with grew up with their kids or grew up or went to high school with a bow they see us you talk about being you know we just try to reiterate to them i mean  you have something we just wanted it to tell on what ken was saying about follow up what i see as the big need a apart from what you were asking about outreach but these types of cases what's involved is having someone as a social worker who i mean we do we do follow up but for these really complex cases the amount of time that's needed to coordinate with all the it all the departments and outside departments those service agencies whether they're you know cleaning services or the hospitals you know for example i mean we may know a very difficult situation at home and we can get that person miraculously to an emergency room the hospital the hospital doesn't know the home situation at all  they say this person that's ok they don't need to be in the hospital but when we've had the resources to after hours for a social worker to call and say wait a  let me tell you then we've been able to intervene on him more time sensitive basis and just in just the number of the coals and the number of follow ups that are required it's very tedious work with these very very difficult cases and when jamie was talking about the number of calls that come to police around a particular case i can i we do have one case recently where an individual was calling every single day and that's that's a lot of police time once that person was connected appropriately and it it has you know it has that effect and i just mention one other thing which is that one of the issues that the reason why we're dealing with all this in you know more now is that the department of mental health and mental health services in general are are being depleted in the state and so another reason why we're we are where we that you have other thoughts about what increased social services might do to be helpful to you anytime that you can be proactive rather than reactive you're putting yourself in a better position to help somebody unlike everyone else up here as a life and social worker or working with police and fire the housing authority does not have a mandatory reporter right now so there are certain things that we see that we can call in but it gets treated a little bit different then when you're when you're hearing from a mandatory reporter plus the follow up if what's happening you say what a mandatory reporter is a mandatory reporting they probably know better than i do but it's someone who is required that when they see certain situations that they report it to the appropriate agencies for a break in here this is something i worked going back in abused emotionally abused neglected by a caretaker is in a situation of self abuse or financial exploitation and they have reasonable cause to believe that this is happened  they may report to the state agency and the state will respond either on an emergency or a little bit longer basis and investigate and with the consent of the jackie was saying the following types of professed professions or so called mandated reporters of elder abuse they include physicians physician assistants nurses medical internes coroners dentists podiatrist osteopaths social workers occupational physical therapist psychologist family counsellors police probation officers e firefighters director of a home health agency director of a homemaker agency director of an assisted living residence case managers health aides homemakers director of a council an aging council an aging outreach workers mandated reporters who failed to report elder abuse may be subject to a fine so there are mandated reporter trainings during the year through the executive office of elder affairs so not only mandated reporters agency originally for belmont is the spring well incorporated over in waltham so i just thought i'd mention the fact that we do have a state agency where  you can report abuse neglect self neglect and there will be a follow up by individuals with that person and with their consent in most cases purpose services some services  referrals can be provided thank you so jackie do you feel that if you had more social work or social service availability even though you don't have that  mandated requirement you would have more support with the very difficult situations you have i'm sorry i just i asked what how it would help jackie if there were more social services available yeah i went there at least in foresman issues whether it's somebody who has hoarding situation going on or just overall cleanliness of a unit or sometimes just being able to get along with your neighbors as your aging the support of a social worker would certainly help deescalate some of the situations that we're dealing with the housing authority the staff in general does our best to help preserve tendencies we're here to house people who want to keep people out but there is a lease and it has to be followed and so having somebody that kind of can say i'm not the housing authority in particular but i'm here to help support you so that way you can abide by your lease and live here and in a healthy way it would certainly be helpful to us ok now it's a so if any members of the audience have questions please go up to that microphone or if you're not able to i can bring a microphone to you please state your name and who you would like to direct your question  two my name is abby's smith and i'm wondering if other people in belmont have my problem which has to do with recycling and the garbage the program that i cannot move them but worse than that there is no play is on my property to keep them i have a small garage for my car it won't fit in there or the way the house is set up there is no place for them to be so i've lived in my house for forty two years very independently always did the garbage no problem the reside laying but now i can't do it and i don't have the kind of neighbors that i can ask and they're not volunteering i mean that's a huge job to just have a neighbor do so my daughter lives in cambridge and i say you are often luckily and she is taking all of my garbage and reside goal our newspapers several times a week to cambridge and the city of cambridge is disposing of all of my stuff i pay the belmont taxes but i'm not getting anything in return for my recycle or garbage and i'm wondering does anybody else have this problem did the people with the garbage arrangement talk to you thing your people about this i'd love it if they would come and look at my piece of property but i don't think they're going to find any place to keep these barrels any more than i mean i've already studied the situation so that's what i wanted to say independently and goodness gracious you know these kinds of things that if it were not for having a family member who could help you would make what you're saying would make that ability to be independent very difficult so this is so some good news on the horizon which is that the town of belmont has now entered what's called the aids friendly community network and what we're doing is we're obliged to put together an advisory council made up of various officials in different departments nongovernmental leaders and we're going to be getting together to fine projects find issues that are keeping belmont from being as age friendly as possible so this advisory council that we're putting together i'll put that as as a as a big item i mean i think that's a good a good forum for us to dress that kind of thing i would suggest contacting the department of public works and you have ok yeah ok all right well you have the smaller bins ok well i believe we have an ordinance here that prohibits you from keeping your car on the street at night but i don't think we have an ordinance or by law that would prohibit you from keeping your bins where they are when they're picked up so i have a neighbor who has the same problem you do and she just leaves her bins out all the time and she hasn't been on this well near the street on the curb and she takes her trash out to the been there now officer house and remain independent by keeping your bins there i would consider just trying it until you're perhaps neighbors or someone else complained so you would have to take your trash out to the bins there yes well yeah not much you can do about that except wait them down i guess so but i would try to leave them perhaps until somebody complains if that helps you  ok yes i my name is donna brusha one i used to work for the national safety council and i feel that what we're suggesting here is almost the same problem of people leaving their stop shopping carts in a shopping center because those put the bins will blow around on to the street people will try to avoid it they'll hit some kid they'll hit a car so i don't think leaving your bins but anyway but i digress so a little sad about this delay and sort of coming along to where i'll probably have similar problems that elders have and i'm concerned about what this says about our town that we don't we aren't funding i mean we all know you need more social workers and we all know everybody is aging and we all know everybody's i mean my mother is ninety nine and i watch it all the house i'm on the housing authority board and we are funded solely by the state we don't get any city for town funds i don't think that the d h c d is going to give money for a social worker for a two hundred and fifty unit whenever we are prop housing authority but my question to all of us is everybody what are we doing here as a town that we're not spending enough money to take care of our elders i don't want to say that we shouldn't be spending as much money in the schools because i think that's very important but why don't we start thinking of other people who we have to protect maybe the people seventy and older and see how many people are in our town who are seventy or older are or i really want to say seventy five because i'm almost seventy why don't we try to think about them and taking care of them the way we take care of our children which is a wonderful thing that we do and people move to our town because it has great schools so why don't we start thinking of helping preserve the diversity of our town by allowing elders to live in our town a little bit longer and not i'm happy to talk to you about thoughts about how we can maybe put in you know requests to the selectmen or the budget committee or the warrant committee or think about it's very sad that i forget your name i'm sorry abby but it's very sad that you don't have a neighbor a we don't have a program in a school where high school kids go out and help elders and maybe get paid minimum wage or and we don't have the money to do that i think we have to start thinking about that i'm jane sure when i live on whitcomb street and i nd your your statement that's absolutely critical my my comment had been or my question was what about  about educating and engaging the community as a whole we have a very large bulge of need and in addition to it sounds to me it likes additional social workers  very convincing what you're saying and somebody who's a volunteer who has no clue about social work isn't going to be able to give a sophisticated report to the mount auburn emergency room but  volunteer in the neighborhood perhaps even someone who signs up to be the sort of on this street person who is aware of these people that's that doesn't call for sophisticated training but it does call for some kind of commitment and interest in understanding about what it means no longer to be sixty and to have needs that you didn't have before i've done a lot of writing about about seniors about old age and it's very clear that there's a whole set of attitudes and stereotypes that really get in the way of asking for help and so there are there are undoubtedly ways to put articles into the citizen harold make use of the belmont citizens forum friendly belmont that could be a group to focus on some of these tasks because my sense was as i listened to you describe these very painful stories of these  very isolated people it's as though nobody knows about this except the fire department the police department and the council on aging the community doesn't have a sense of this as a reality as a real part of who we are at least not yet anyway just a comment on that the the one thing about that is is we go back to the whole mandated reporting which is fine but we have very limited on what we can say which unfortunately is the other thing we do run a course a lot like you said we know about it college so an agent unfortunately is in some situation our hands are tied so we can work amongst each other trying to get this solved but i  with you it's got to be a way that we can i want to see you know in a general way but we need to educate more that that we need you know without being spit specific because we  ninety's and totally independent you know she's a little more frail than she used to be there is a stigma that people feel and people feel embarrassed also about not being as independent as they used to be but it is a universal issue for humans and you know perhaps educating and making it a more general you know maybe even one book one belmont could be about right aging issues yeah  well it's rarer and rar no my name is ann paulson and i'm going to ask you have you put together a proposal for a social worker that a number of us i'm sure there are some other people here that would also agree that if that kind of social services needed and needs to be shared or maybe too that needs to be shared need to be shared amongst the various departments i think there are many people here who would be willing to support that and go with you to the board of selectmen and to the warrant committee to see to it that the services that are required for the citizens are carried out thank you very much i do have a proposal  it was presented it was st in the form of a grant that at the time was three years ago was very well received by the cummings foundation but they wanted to provide grants to communities that had much larger low income people so it was there was there was merit to the grant but they didn't anyway when that but the board of selectmen at the time said that they wholeheartedly approve of the proposal and we're going to move forward with it but then other intervening things happen and so that proposal exists and it's in our it's it in the last three years it's been part of what was called the supplemental budget request so i have that available and be happy to share was our time hi i'm judy finds i'm another senior aging in place at the moment and i want to go back a little bit in the evenings conversation to the mentions of financial insecurity and people's concerns about being able to keep their homes whether for physical reasons mental reasons financial reasons the whole spectrum i just to briefly mention that clain hospital has come to the planning board with a new proposal to develop another piece of their land up there and it's a proposal that's supposed to be senior directed but it's not really senior housing i won't go into the details now but read about it in the paper or go to the planning boards website there's a hearing on the th about it a number of us have started to push back and say you could do more there you could do more that's really focused for seniors you could make more small units that people could move to as either condos or rentals i mean that would make many many people in town be able to stay here and you know just be much more comfortable so i don't want to divert but this is been a terrific panel but i just wanted to add that thank you and the other questions short go right up to the mike please my name is alice paul and i live on the east road i've lived in belmont over fifty years i used to walk all over town now that i'm a senior citizen i don't walk all over town but i noticed that sidewalks are not friendly for people especially senior citizens who want to walk i walk along like this because i'm looking at the cracks in the rocks in the crevices and i feel unsafe i already have had a broken hip and you know i don't want to fall and i think it's it's unsafe for us to have these sidewalks and yet encourage people get exercise get up and move walk so i'm wondering where that m into what your mom might be thinking about to make life a little easier for senior citizens that's part of the age friendly yeah i think that here in year you're giving me material to work with as we form this advisory council that now that we are in the age friendly community network sidewalks should be about transportation not just in motor vehicles whether it's bicycles or walking transportation and i think the towns kind of go into a shift right now and there's a number of different groups that are looking at whether it's safe routes to school  complete streets that will do modifications to certain areas to improve sidewalk conditions and i just know i'm not an expert on it but i've been enough meetings and it cost a lot of money to do sidewalks to hear that  i think the town department of public works has a list of streets they work on every year that they raise a town meeting and i believe may include sidewalks what streets the sidewalks will be worked on so if you contact the department of public works that could be useful next question please linda says noir and i live on barnard road and i'm very interested in the housing issue  for seniors in the town of belmont i think some very good points have been raised i don't think the mcclane proposal is a good one because it's such an isolated place and how are seniors supposed to get out and get shopping done and what not if they don't have transportation but i digress sometimes people come here and speak to the seniors about developers who are being allowed to bid on parcels of land that become available in the town  they are proposing these fordable so so many affordable units this this is really not a solution to the housing crisis in this town for seniors this is if this is going to be an age friendly community i agree social services are necessary i think housing is really necessary and before another developer as allowed to come into this town and make a whole lot of money on property that could be developed to sustain our senior community i think this is what should be given a priority thank you thank you and i reference a previous question or talked about the planning board meeting that's going to take place on a development the date was ok seven o'clock perhaps so you may want to go to that and listen to what's being proposed next questioner thank you and convey no goldenberg or stern's wrote i have a general question in a specific the general one is what does a fire and police department do with people who are not elderly you don't refer them to nava to the council on aging or what happens with them well if we have somebody who is having it like made it so that people who might be having a mental health crisis we would we also that we can use ok for those people ok my specific question is about the fire department years ago i remember getting a questionnaire from the fire department hundred a list of my details including all the medications i was on for you to i thought it was a nice preventive tool but what happened to that do you know  to try to save trees just kidding but this is similar i think to what you're referring to in they used to have a program get sent to every home no i have to my knowledge i would have to mean i not resuscitate orders that people we didn't even mail those yeah and then they would have to come from your doctor and they would go in your refrigerator if your doctor and yourself agreed that there was a situation where you were terminally ill or in other circumstances where you would not want to be resuscitated by the fire department that you would have this document filled out and on your refrigerator so when the east came they would know what your preference was if you were unable to otherwise that's not what you're referring to is that no i don't think so i remember carrying it to the fire department itself at home several years ago i don't remember exactly when we came here and handed him out that's what these probably really are yeah yeah yeah ok so when i referred to earlier my comments about the scene is safe and they come here occasionally for it's not myself but it's usually i believe fight fight of honor and then maybe a couple of fight fight is that i'm leaving out that they come here and they've probably come here with the file so it would be easy did on it and they go on your fridge or ada so teddy you who's in charge of communications nine hundred and eleven ok so that's news to me i didn't know he came here but where do you get these i get a whole bunch for you right behind me repeatedly we've given big props to five of our body does a fantastic job i'm not one hundred percent if the other firefighters that do the safe if they're involved in the scene is safe i should probably know that i know i'm have about at least thirty five percent of our clientele are senior citizens and that's who numbers that we got about two or three years ago and with the many moves that we've been doing where now in the process of kind of reorganizing our data so i'm fairly sure that that number is higher i want to thank jackie who has done a great job working with the helots our director on getting people to sign up for the food pantry and give us the information that we need to be able to track their the people that come in a lot of the work that happens for with us and we're not a town organization this is a volunteer organization we don't fall under the department of the council on aging the health department the police department anything that's kind of official but what we do do is try and speak with the departments when we see that there is a problem so we call the police department when we know that there's a senior who might be having a problem and also younger people parents with young children and babies to get them car seats but i'm wondering how we can chalk kind of make sure that we don't have these silos of groups doing work which i have seen for years in years and everybody else has seen that that are different people that are doing things and that sometimes we have a delta of a need that's not met and sometimes we've got resources that are sort of duplicating the efforts and so for an organization such as ours which is kind of off at the side who don't have who aren't sitting on the age friendly network who art in the meetings that you guys have of how can we make sure that we've got that information that we're able to share the information can we understand about privacy we we don't ask any of our clients for any kind of means testing we just ask them to show that they live here but we want to make sure that we're reaching all the people that we need to we certainly see that there are seniors who are very prideful who have felt you know i've lived in belmont for generations and i don't know why now i'm sitting here needing to go to the food pantry we try to make it so that everybody feels welcome but i know that we're missing people and that we're not being able to necessarily give the kind of help that we need us want to say i used to be the chair of the disability access commission in town and we did have a phone number that people could call and ask for help not that seniors are disabled but the mail the majority of calls that we got of people who wanted some assistance were senior people who needed to have a ride to take them food shopping or arrive to take them to a doctor's appointment and i know that some of the services are available through the council on aging but again here that sort of the silos of how can we make sure that we're sharing everything that we can with stretched resources and if we don't have extra social workers which i think we all have decided we need how can we make sure that we're still providing the services to to all of our clients rather than kind of doing it in a scattershot way not that you guys are doing it in a scattershot way believe me i match domestic violence senior citizens not saying that everybody else in between doesn't matter but those are kind of the vulnerable segments of the population and we do a very very good job with the domestic violence and the and the kids and that's because we've created partnerships you know the way that i work in the school i would invision the same model of whether it's lieutenant daley or an officer here we have a member a member and a memorandum of understanding with the schools that we will every police report that a kid is mentioned in and with some parents when they're involved that the label why you tell the schools that my kid got in trouble saturday night or something like that but you know it really works well because the schools they have psychologist they have consuls if teachers they have coaches they have all these people that are investing their time in their kids and when so when monday morning comes around and m that we kids in belmont have very limited interaction with the criminal justice system but the majority of problems are handled at the school level and those are the that's the kind of resources you would be nice if we had  officer that worked only in senior citizen problems then on monday morning they came down and met with a social worker and they said you know these are the issues we have to work on this week and that there was a whole network the we do the same thing with domestic violence we meet once a month when we're the call these high risk domestic domestic violence cases with the middle middlesex district attorney's office and victim witness advocates and we talk about ways to get these people services that they need and it really is a model that should be carried forward to senior citizens in town and we have kind of the police component i'm confident we could do that but we resources lay laurie just said spread out all over the place we have somebody needs food we go to the food bank we have somebody needs housing we go to beaumont housing you know would be nice if those resources were under the same roof i don't know if memorandums of understanding or agreements can be created that allow us to share information i bet they could be done and i think that would be helpful and probably something we should look at i have a question of knob when will the age friendly certificate  fester will be presenting the certificate to the chair of the board of selectmen and the board of selectmen meeting room and how many seats are there on the friendly belmont advisory committee is that limited  no we were going to have to put together that group but i but i'd think that any volunteers any volunteer agencies should contact me and we'll make sure that you get a seat that's great news susan do you want to sum up what we've done tonight i think we've done a very comprehensive discussion of the needs of the older population in belmont and we've seen how wonderfully the agencies and in belmont are are working to try to meet these needs i guess the overarching take home is that people really want to make sure that belmont becomes even more of an age friendly community addressing having a voice on you know having a place at the table to present issues such as garbage sidewalks things that interfere with age friendliness and that we somehow get more resources so that these very hard working people can rely on more support and have more availability to reach out and meet the needs that are at this point being met tha