Baby Boomers Facing Less Help to Care for Aging Parents

by Harold Wolfson from the Local Summit

(December 22, 2005) Baby boomers in their fifties who are becoming caregivers to parents and other older relatives may find diminishing Medicare, Medicaid, state and county help available.

This is what Laura Bolotsky, Director of Operations at Westchester County’s Department of Senior Programs and Services, told members of the Local Summit organization meeting at the Nautilus Diner in Mamaroneck, December 20th.

“No one wants to end up in a nursing home --- they want to live out their years in their own homes and neighborhoods,” she said. But rising costs and declining assistance are making that more and more difficult.

She said that recent federal budget cuts for Medicaid and Medicare will whittle away elder benefits from the top to the bottom of the government food chain - federal funding triggers the amount of state and county funds available.

Westchester’s Department of Senior Programs presently offers a number of local services for seniors, including those for transportation, nutrition, home care, service information and referrals, and care planning and care arrangement.

There was a time when, if government programs like these were unavailable, volunteer services would pick up a good deal of the slack. But volunteer services are diminishing as well, she said.

Ms. Bolotsky, a vigorous 74-year old who called herself a “late bloomer,” said democracy and government are rated by how we each help those in need and how we care for each other. She became interested in social work when growing up on Manhattan’s Lower East Side right after World War II. She remembers Girl Scout drives to gather food for the poor. She remembers within her own family acts of kindness such as an aunt coming regularly to clean the house to help her mother, who had given birth to four children in six years and who worked in her husband’s grocery store.

It is her perception that throughout the country today there is a general “loss of common good,” people willing to help each other.

Residents who want to learn more about existing county services for the elderly can check www.westchestergov.com/aging or call (914) 813-6300.

The Local Summit is a grass roots volunteer organization dedicated to making the community a better place to live for everyone. It meets at 7:45 a.m. on the third Tuesday of the month at the Nautilus Dinner. Much of its work is done by specific task groups that meet separately during the month and then report at the larger meeting.

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