Senior centers use lottery funds in evolution
Fred Clark watches the screen as Jane Estanich takes her turn at Wii Bowling at the Carmichaels Activity Center.
Joyce McCombs is a regular on the elliptical machine, just one of the many exercise machines available to seniors at the Carmichaels Activity Center.
John Lund (left) and Ted Hastings watch intently as lines up his shot on one of the billiard tables at the Carmichaels Activity Center.
The Carmichaels Activity Center provides services and activities, including psychical, emotional and social resources to enhance the lives of the senior citizens of the Carmichaels area.
Wendy McKenzie (left) and Dorothy Burnette chat over morning coffee with Bridget Dennison, center services manager at the Carmichaels Activity Center.
The kitchen at the Carmichaels Activity Center prepares an average of 300 meals daily for members in house and for Meals on Wheels clients. Here kitchen staff (from left) Kelly Redman, Ashley Brown and Wendy Dobbins package lunches to home delivery.
Marge Hatalsky, a volunteer in the kitchen at the Center in the Woods fills carafes with coffee for the lunch time crowd.
It's pizza Friday at the Center in the Woods and kitchen volunteer Doris Encapera prepares pies for the lunchtime meal.
A unique feature to the Center in the Woods in the doctors office in the center. Here Kelli Fine M.A. (right) checks David Brecht's blood pressure during his visit to the doctors office.
Norma J. Golenbiewski takes a turn at Wii Bowling, another recreation offered at the Center in the Woods to help seniors stay active and fit.
The Center in the Woods offers raised bed gardens so members with green thumbs don't have to stoop or bend over to enjoy gardening. Here Betty Fiffik waters pepper and tomato plants in the garden.
Helen Balas works at clipping coupons at are sent from the California's Center in the Wood to military personnel serving overseas where they can use them in military commissaries.
Melody Bohna (center) a volunteer at the Center in the Woods joins Elizabeth Freeman, Tony Tiller and others seniors in a game of noodle ball to help keep seniors active.
Senior centers continue to evolve as their clientele does.
Looking back a quarter-century, Bullskin Township Senior Center office coordinator Mary Rhodes recalls “maybe there was a little more going on then. Back then, people didn’t have to work. They could retire a little earlier, and they had more time to devote here.”
“We have seen a slight decline in use, in the number of people who actively come to the center and participate on a daily basis,” said Gwendolyn Ridgley, Fayette County supervisor for the Southwestern Pennsylvania Area Agency on Aging Inc.
“I actually ran the Albert Gallatin Human Services Masontown Senior Center in Masontown back in the 1980s,” George Krcelich, now CEO of Center in the Woods in California and its Maplewood satellite center along New Salem Road outside Uniontown. “Back then the average age probably was in the late 60s, early 70s but now the ages are in their 80s.”
“Senior centers were more looked before as bingo halls and where people gathered to have lunch,” said Stacy Stroman, who has done various duties over 19 years and today is senior services director with Community Action Southwest in Greene County. “We’re trying to change people’s perceptions of what senior centers are.”
That includes both adding services, such as fitness centers and internet cafés, and programs such as country line dancing in Waynesburg, while discontinuing others.
“(At Bullskin), they used to have a care and share program where they talked about different things,” Rhodes said. “We just recently closed a rummage room where we sold used clothing and shoes, just because we don’t have enough people to go around to do that.”
Still, state Secretary of Aging Teresa Osborne said recently, “senior community centers serve as accessible, safe harbors and local gateways to a robust system of home and community-based services that older adults can rely upon as they strive to age in place.”
Osborne’s comments came as her department awarded over $2 million in funds from the state Lottery coffers to 43 senior centers across the commonwealth.
Locally, that included $66,948 for Carmichaels Activity Center, $47,850 for Waynesburg Community Center, $42,000 for Claysville Senior Center and $9,980 for Bullskin Township Senior Center.
“We are going to have a fire alarm system installed in our building,” Rhodes said. “When we would have a fire drill the chief of the (Bullskin Township Volunteer) Fire Department told me about it.”
Half of that $9,980 came to Bullskin after a recent required online seminar or webinar, one of two conducted by the Pennsylvania Department of Aging. PDA said the first dealt with how to complete grant agreements, while the second provided information on how to complete required data reports.
“(The fire alarm system) should be installed by the end of the year,” Rhodes said.
Center in the Woods applied for money for kitchen equipment and managed to get $5,000 worth from surplus funds reallocated by the state Department of Aging.
“We’ve applied for the LSA (Local Services, gambling) money twice,” Krcelich said. “That is a tough one to get into.”
Centers in the three counties covered by Southwestern Pennsylvania Area Agency on Aging Inc., Fayette, Greene and Washington, are filling other gaps.
“They are offering more consumer protection and nutrition education,” Ridgley said. “We’re trying to make the centers more attractive to the younger group of senior citizens, with enhanced and innovated creative programs and activities.”
In Fayette County, that includes state-of-the-art exercise equipment, which Ridgley said can be found in such locations as Connellsville, Masontown and Uniontown.
“One center (in Brownsville) has an open air café during the summer months, and it has proved to be very successful,” Ridgley said.
In Greene County, Community Action Southwest is the contractor for Southwestern Pennsylvania Area Agency on Aging Inc. services to centers in Carmichaels, Waynesburg and Jefferson Township and satellite operations in Bobtown (Dunkard Township), Mount Morris and the West Greene area (Graysville).
“(Carmichaels and Waynesburg) centers are getting some renovation,” Stroman said, “just to kind of modernize the facilities and make them more appealing.”
Stroman said the Area Agency on Aging contract includes care management and ombudsman services as well as home-delivered meals and other senior center operations.
“We will also be implementing intergenerational activities at the Waynesburg Community Center in collaboration with our on-site Head Start classrooms,” Stroman said.
Center in the Woods, at 17,000 square feet in California — one of the largest senior centers in Pennsylvania, has Head Start as well, a constituent office for state Rep. Pete Daley, D-California, and a clinic affiliated with Mon Valley Hospital where blood can be drawn for testing and Dr. Diane E. Emes has office hours.
“We also have a massage therapist, a beautician and a podiatrist once a month,” Krcelich said. “He comes in and services a number of clients in our facility.”
The California center has something else it offers – adult day care, something Krcelich calls a big part of his organization.
“It is a service for Fayette, Greene and Washington,” Krcelich said. “They are cared for during the day. We have taken as young as 55 if dementia is a factor.”
It’s one complication in dealing with an older population. Another is the role many have taken as child care providers to their grandchildren.
“You have to have educational things like nutrition, exercise, technology,” Krcelich said. “That younger group, the baby boomers, it’s hard to get them to participate.”
Not for a lack of trying. Center in the Woods provides a wide range of activities, such as cornhole and dartball tournaments.
As a result, Krcelich said, “We probably have more younger folks coming in than at other centers.”
Other Washington County senior centers are located in Avella, Bentleyville, Burgettstown, Canonsburg, Cecil Township, Charleroi, Donora, Finleyville, Houston, Monongahela, Peters Township, Venetia, Vestaburg and two locations in Washington.
“We can engage people 55 and older, too,” Stroman said. “Our older seniors have been attending the senior centers so we’re trying to get that new generation engaged so they are coming to our sites, too. So we have to work on what are their interests and not just the interests of the older seniors.”
Stroman said a targeted date for the overhaul in Carmichaels and Waynesburg is in November of next year. It goes beyond the physical plants in the two communities.
“We are implementing some new technology,” Stroman said. “We are going to have wireless access points at both of our centers, as we are going to have iPads available and we are going to have someone come in to teach classes on how to use them, to get them comfortable with using smart phones and things like that.”
There are other outreaches as well.
“We’ve partnered with the Pittsburgh Filmmakers/Pittsburgh Center for the Arts on a Creative Aging Arts Program,” Stroman said. “And we have the Center without Walls initiative where we are targeting a couple of our senior housing complexes (Gateway Senior Housing in Waynesburg and Carmichaels Arbors) and taking our services there.”
Some things do not change. Carmichaels has a kitchen that services other Greene County senior centers.
“We still have our spaghetti dinner twice a year on election day,” Rhodes said. “It used to be four times a year. We still have a strawberry festival and a peach festival. We have days when we have bingo with Harmon House in Mount Pleasant and Senior Life in Uniontown.”
Other major recipients of lottery-fueled state funding in nearby areas include Jewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh ($132,542) and Vintage Inc. ($88,400), both in Allegheny County.