Adviser LeadingAge New York Summer 2015 July 2015 | Page 35

Selfhelp Community...
community based programs or services,
the dollar value of entitlements received
which help support independence, the
volume of home visits and office visits,
and the hours of case management
services provided.
The BIP Safety Net program was fully
staffed in November of 2014, and
has been operating for seven months.
To date, BIP social workers have
assessed 222 clients and applied for
223 entitlements and benefits for these
clients. The dollar amount of these
entitlements and benefits that clients
will receive is approximately $85,900
dollars annually. It is important to
note that this money is returned to
the communities that these clients
live in, supporting the economy as a
whole. There was also 179 referrals
made on behalf of these clients that
addressed health care and home care
needs, transportation access, grants
for needed house hold items, nutrition
programs such as meals on wheels,
legal and immigrations services, as well
as programs to decrease isolation and
increase socialization and mental health.
The program has been hugely successful.

Q. Specifically, what worked?
And what didn’t work?
Tova: There were some challenges
regarding office space as it was not
anticipated that so many clients
preferred to be seen in the office and
not in their homes. Of the 222 clients,
83 were conducted in the office while
134 were conducted in the homes.
Clients were not being seen in one
borough but in all 5 boroughs. There
were times when the social workers
would spend several hours trying to find
a client’s home, only to return to an

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office because they were lost or ended
up in unfamiliar and isolated locations.
Keeping workers in one borough,
becoming the experts in resources and
services in one community helps social
workers to build strong community
relationships and alliances as well as a
very comprehensive resource data base.
Many useful resources and services are
not government funded but created by
private foundations, religious institutions
and volunteer organizations. Tapping into
these resources when necessary helps
to address the needs of some clients
who are either ineligible for government
programs or not appropriate.
Assessing clients, identifying needed
services and applying for those services
is only the first step in helping a client
to remain functionally independent. An
ongoing challenge has been the lack of
specific resources and services available
to meet a client’s needs. We can identify
that a frail older adult with heart failure
who is frequently showing up in the ER
is in need of subsidized housing because
he is rooming in an illegal basement
apartment with 10 other people and
has no access to kitchen facilities. But
what are we expected to do when we
know that a client must wait years until
a subsidized apartment will become
available? The client who is wheelchair
bound or memory impaired is in
desperate need of home care services
but must now wait months before
the program he/she is enrolled in will
actually begin services. Social workers
can fill out forms, they can be strong
advocates, but there are times when the
actual coordination and implementation
of community based services, despite
client eligibility, just doesn’t happen the
way we expect or want it to.

leadingageny.org

Q. What are your plans for
sustainability of the project?
Tova: The BIP programs will end
September 30th 2015. There are no
plans to sustain the project though
the lessons learned and the successful
experiences attained will be used to
participate in future DSRIP projects.
Q. If you had it to do over,
what would you have done
differently?
Tova: We would have loved to start
earlier in the year and be fully staffed
with a data system in place. We also
would have liked some training support
from the State. The program had a
delayed start and seemed rushed when it
did start, but all in all everything worked
out well.
We would have also written into the
proposal from the get go and expansion
of potential clients beyond the Selfhelp
housing wait list to include Medicaid or
Medicaid eligible clients in other housing
unit wait lists as well as temporary
housing sites/homeless shelters. The
State’s interest in serving undocumented
seniors was also a late addition to the
program and would have been valuable
to begin with earlier.

Q. If the State asked you what
it should do next, what would
you say?
Tova: By reaching out to housing
applicants as a result of provided
housing waitlist information, the BIP
Safety Net social workers were able to
connect with frail older adults in need
who would not have reached out for
help on their own. We noted that many
of our BIP clients needed to receive
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