Center For The Advocacy For The Rights & Interests Of The Elderly

Programs: The long-term care ombudsman program is a federally mandated program to provide advocates for long term care consumers through which carie represents more than 4,000 residents of 150 settings in philadelphia. In fy 2017, staff and volunteers handled 152 complaints from consumers, made 378 visits to long term care programs, and provided information and consultation to 328 individuals. The ombudsman program worked with two "peer" programs to empower long term care consumers to serve as ombudsman for fellow residents. The program planned carie's annual "golden games" athletic competition for long term care consumers with more than 200 residents, staff and volunteers participating.

the carie line is a unique client-centered, telephone consultation and advocacy service for older adults, caregivers and professionals providing frail and vulnerable older adults and educates consumers, caregivers and professionals about the rights of the elderly and their needs. In fy 2017, the carie line served 2,170 older adults and family caregivers and addressed 3,154 problems. Among problems, 99% were completely resolved. 991 older victims of crime and abuse were provided with comprehensive victim's services and 56 victims' homes were re-secured through the elderly victims emergency security fund. Carie line staff presented or participated in 95 educational programs and information fairs reaching 2,965 older persons, caregivers and professionals with critical information.

the pennsylvania senior medicare patrol (smp) recruits and trains a corps of retired professional volunteers statewide to educate their peers about health care fraud and how to report it. In fy 2017, smp volunteers and staff conducted 238 presentations and participated in information fairs that reached a total of 9,856 persons; and assisted 985 individuals one-on-one throughout pennsylvania.

carie distributed copies of its caregiver handboook and conducted several presentations. The caregivergps the elder's advocate, a web-based resource to help caregivers make elder care decisions is on-line and available to caregivers everywhere. During the year, several staff assisted the lgbt-ei with educational programming. A number of elder abuse trainings were conducted for professional staff. Ethics training manuals and elder abuse prevention training manuals in the "competence with compassion" series were distributed. Presentations were made at the consumer voice for quality ltc and the american society on aging annual meetings. Policy: carie's dorothy s. Washburn legislative committee educates policy makers and monitors legislative and regulatory developments at the local, state, and national levels to promote the wellbeing of older adults. Carie's advocacy was successful in maintaining the cabinet level status for the secretary of aging after it was threatened with merger into a large agency which would have resulted in a strong voice for older adults in pa. Carie continued successful advocacy on the state budget yielded funds to serve an additional 1,788 with home and community-based services. Carie provided advocacy around pa's office of long term living's (oltl's) planning of community healthchoices (chc) that will shift the those eligible for both medicaid and medicare from a fee-for-service to a managed care system. Carie had many other areas of advocacy including providing testimony at state and federal hearings, submitting comments to pa state agencies and the centers for medicare & medicaid services (cms), and public education.