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SUCCESSFUL AGING: HEALTH, LEGAL & SOCIAL SERVICES SEMINAR & FAIRThe "Successful Aging Seminar and Fair" was designed to educate senior citizens on valuable topics to help them address their "golden years" with knowledge and confidence. During a day seminar, 15 experts from the law, the medical community, and social service organizations spoke to over 250 seniors. Throughout the day, 16 exhibitors which represented social service organizations were available to provide materials and answer questions for the seniors. Each participant received a booklet comprised of short outlines prepared by each speaker, information from the exhibitors, and an extensive list of helpful organizations with a short description of their services. The speakers were videotaped, and the tapes were sent to the heads of various elderly organizations, nutrition centers, senior centers, and nursing and retirement homes for their library collection. This pilot project received second place from the Texas Young Lawyers Association for Service to the Public.
II. PROJECT PLANNING/DEVELOPMENT
A. Identification of Need
During the Fall of 1992, the Elderly Citizens Education Committee of San Antonio Young Lawyers Association was formed to educate seniors on wills, guardianships, powers of attorney, probate, Medicare/Medicaid and other related topics. Approximately 25 attorneys were involved in the writing of the materials and the giving of the presentations. Pamphlets, in English and Spanish, were distributed to the elderly citizens after the presentations. The project has enjoyed great success by educating and answering questions of over 1000 senior citizens at nutrition center sites in Bexar County.
At the conclusion of our 1993-1994 year, however, the Committee determined that this education should be expanded to include consumer law, health care and social services and to make education a concentrated effort in a day event which would be videotaped. The initial idea for expanding our education to include consumer law resulted from the chairman's own experience with several elderly clients who had been sued under the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act. From the evaluation sheets which had been collected during our 1994 presentations, the Committee determined that health care and social service organizations should be included in the day seminar.
The Chairman decided that the need for such public education did not require the Committee to perform a needs determination or assessment. It was apparent from the experience of the young lawyers with elderly citizens that the seniors lacked education in all three areas. We discussed this day event with the executive director of the Bexar Area Agency On Aging, a subdivision of the Alamo Area Council of Governments, and the director of Legal Awareness Benefits Counseling, a subdivision of the Bexar Area Aging On Aging, and received a hearty endorsement for this educational program.
If one decided to perform a need determination or assessment, surveys could be performed to obtain elderly citizens' knowledge concerning the legal aspects of estate planning and consumer law, related health care issues and the services that social service organizations could provide. Such a survey could be performed by a telephone poll or by questionnaires which could be distributed to senior centers, nutrition centers, churches, nursing and residential homes. Such polls or questionnaires could verify their need for education in these arenas.
B. Determination of Project Goals and Design
1. Decisions to be Made
a. Options - Project Goals
Our project had three goals:
b. Options - Project Design
In the past two years, the Affiliate had young lawyers present materials to elderly citizens at nutrition centers. There were two problems with this approach. First, since many attorneys could not commit to giving presentations during the work week from 10:30 to 2:00, the logistics became very time consuming and difficult. Second, many of the elderly citizens were not interested in the materials presented because of their senior age or lack of concern over the issues presented.
By focusing our efforts in a day long event on a Saturday, we were able to have the one-time commitment of many expert speakers. We also knew that those low-income seniors who would attend really wanted to be educated and would use the information and resources which we could provide. To compensate those who would not be able to attend due to their disabilities, we determined that the materials would be mailed to them after the Seminar.
After extensive discussion with a group of doctors who worked extensively with the elderly, we changed the name of our committee and seminar to be Successful Aging. The words "Successful Aging" had been used in many of their seminars and was a preferred alternative to "elderly citizens" or "senior citizens".
We set up a telephone message system for reservations and retrieved the names and addresses of participants. Ten days prior to the event, we mailed confirmations and admission tickets with a map to the event to all participants. Approximately one-third of the confirmed participants were no-shows. However, many of those spots were filled by walk-ins on the day of the event.
The Seminar and Fair was conducted at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio on the first Saturday of March of 1995. Due to the short attention span of senior citizens, all speakers were given between 15 and 30 minutes for their presentation, except for the consumer law expert who was given a hour due to the length of his topic and his ability to entertain. The schedule of the speakers and a list of the exhibitors are attached as "Exhibit A".
As an incentive to attend, breakfast and lunch were provided free to the participants. Additionally, door prizes were awarded throughout the day. Each participant left with information from the exhibitors and a 165 page booklet comprised of short outlines prepared by each speaker, information from the exhibitors, and an extensive list of helpful organizations with a short description of their services. The entire seminar was videotaped so that those who could not attend or did not hear about the event would be able to see the presentations. The video tapes have been sent to the heads of various elderly organizations, nutrition centers, senior centers, and nursing and retirement homes for their permanent library collection.
Affiliates which do not have access to a large forum for the event could do smaller-scale seminar. By doing a three-hour seminar which addressed only specific issues, food would not have to be provided. Moreover, by doing a series of short seminars all and possibly more topics could be addressed. If an affiliate does not have access to the financial funds or is unable to solicit a donation of the printing of the materials, the speakers could do short tip sheets to be distributed at the seminar.
Another alternative to a seminar would be to videotape the speakers and make the videos available at places where the seniors congregate. An affiliate may be able to solicit the videotaping of the speakers by approaching video companies which attorneys use frequently or a large company which has its own video department.
2. Decision-making Process
The Committee received a grant for the Seminar from the Texas Young Lawyers Association in the early Fall of 1994; thereby, giving us the seed funds to begin planning the event. The Chairman of the Successful Aging Seminar and Fair, as a member of the SAYLA Executive Committee, kept the SAYLA Board of Directors informed as to the progress of the event. However, all decisions and all solicitations of donations were made by the Successful Aging Chairman and Co-Chairman.
3. Considerations in Project Planning
a. Community Resources
In order to make this project successful, the Committee had to form a partnership in order to have a forum for the event. The most logical choice was a medical university so that we could obtain their input as to health topics that concerned senior citizens. Moreover, by forming this partnership, the medical university provided us with speakers at no charge, advertising for the event, and the videotaping of the event at cost.
The Committee did not seek another co-sponsor since we able to solicit other in-kind donations without forming additional partnerships. However, if an affiliate does not have the financial security of an initial donation of cash, it would be appropriate to form a partnership with a health care facility or drug company to secure a cash commitment. Since many organizations commit their community designated funds at the beginning of their fiscal year, this type of cash donation should be solicited very early in the planning process.
b. Personnel
Neither the SAYLA nor the Successful Aging Committee have a staff. The affiliate relied entirely on the efforts of its own volunteers. The Chairman and the Committee members and/or their staff had the following duties: to organize the event; to solicit sponsorships, speakers, and exhibitors; to organize registration and the designing and printing of admission tickets and confirmations to be mailed to the participants; to organize the materials for publication in booklet form; to determine a menu with the help of a food service company which would provide breakfast and lunch; to help with registration and time-keeping for the speakers at the event; and to organize video professionals to video the event, edit the tapes and produce copies for distribution. Not including the day of the event, the project took approximately 200 hours to complete over a ten-month period. A proportionately large part of this time was spent on registration and can be performed by a staff person.
To operate efficiently, the program can be completed with as few as seven or eight volunteers. It is essential for the volunteers who work on the speakers and exhibitors for the event to have extensive knowledge in the area of senior citizens. The speakers must be experts in their field so that their written materials do not have to be reviewed for accuracy. Due to our liaison with a medical university we did not have to pay the doctors who spoke, nor did we have to pay the other expert speakers. Furthermore, depending on the desired quality of the food and the videos, the food service organization and video people should be professionals.
c. Revenue Availability/Fund Raising
The total budget for the Successful Aging Seminar and Fair was $3,700, a grant from the Texas Young Lawyers Association. The Committee also applied for grants from the ABA Young Lawyers' Division and the ABA - Commission on Legal Problems of the Elderly for the Marie Walsh Sharpe Endowment, but to no avail. Since the entire annual budget of the SAYLA is less than $10,000, we could not rely on any funding by SAYLA and had to solicit outside funding through in-kind donations.
The Chairman first successfully approached the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio to develop a co-sponsorship of the event in order that we would have a suitable forum and a link to doctors who would be willing to waive their customary speaking fee. The second largest donation was for printing of the booklets and was obtained from Tesoro Petroleum Corporation after unsuccessfully approaching Kinetic Concepts. We were also successful in employing Luby's, which was located near the forum for the event, to provide door prizes and meals on a reduced fee basis.
If an affiliate does not have the financial security of an initial donation of cash, one alternative would be to solicit a health care facility or drug company to secure a cash commitment. These types of "for-profit" organizations are prime candidates for on-going cash contributions since they serve senior citizens and would like to enhance the use of their facilities or their products. Another alternative would be to solicit a retirement organization for a donation, such as AARP.
As discussed earlier, affiliates which do not have the access to a large forum for the event could do smaller-scale seminar. By doing a three-hour seminar, food would not have to be provided. Furthermore, affiliates, which do not have access to financial funds or are unable to solicit a donation of the printing of the materials, may ask the speakers to do short tip sheets to be distributed with the seminar.
Another alternative to a large-scale seminar would be to videotape the speakers and make the videos available at places where the seniors congregate. Affiliates may be able to solicit the videotaping of the speakers by approaching video companies which attorneys use frequently or a large company which has its own video department.
d. Other...Include Equipment/Physical Needs
No office space was required for this project. However, the Seminar and Fair required a large forum for the event, which was provided by University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.
If a large forum cannot be found, affiliates could do smaller seminars at places where seniors congregate. As an alternative, the speakers could be videotaped and be shown to seniors at various places throughout the city or possibly on television.
III. IMPLEMENTATION...HOW TO REPLICATE THIS PROJECT
The following is an eight month schedule prior to the event and a prior after the event:
Because so few volunteers were necessary for this project, recruiting from the SAYLA was not a problem. Additionally, virtually no training was required by the volunteers.
C. Publicity
We did advertising of the event through flyers to churches, nutrition centers, senior citizens groups, and retirement homes. Free advertising was also done on two television stations, many radio stations including two senior talk shows and one legal show, and various print media, including the Senior Sentinel and the local newspaper.
D. Day-To-Day Operations
This project has no regular day-to-day operations. However, emergencies are handled by the Chairman of the Successful Aging Committee.
IV. EVALUATION AND IMPACT
The San Antonio Young Lawyers Association was able to educate many senior citizens on various legal, health and social service topics. The seniors had the questions answered and appeared happy at the end of the day and left with not only our booklets but also the materials from the 16 exhibitors.
Our affiliate has received substantial positive feedback from the participants, the exhibitors, the speakers, and the media. Moreover, the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio has indicated that they would be willing to host an annual seminar at their facility for the elderly. The only negative feedback was the length of the program. An all day seminar was too long for some of the seniors. Thus, in the future, we may reduce the number of speakers and/or have a series of seminars.
At the time of preparation of this pamphlet, the videos had recently been mailed to the State Bar of Texas, heads of various elderly organizations, nutrition centers, senior centers, and nursing and retirement homes for their permanent library collection. We expect the addition of the videos to their collections will enable the seniors to learn about areas that interest them. As of yet we have not received any feedback regarding the videos.
V. BIBLIOGRAPHY/OTHER RESOURCES
For copies of the materials and/or loan of the videos, please contact:
Affiliate Contact: Abigail G. Kampmann
Affiliate: San Antonio Young Lawyers Association
SUCCESSFUL AGING: HEALTH, LEGAL & SOCIAL SERVICES
Sponsored by the San Antonio Young Lawyers Association and
The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio
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EXHIBITORS
1. AARP - American Association of Retired Persons |