When Cathy Chavez started working at the Community Services Agency seven years ago, not one of the hundreds of seniors the organization served were as old as 90. Today, 15 percent of them are, and CSA is struggling to keep up with the increased demand.
Facing a growing population of seniors that are living longer than ever, CSA is turning to the Internet as a way to stretch its limited resources, provide services to everyone and continue to keep seniors healthy and independent.
“The goal is to help them become better informed health care consumers — and also to kind of demystify the Internet,” said CSA associate director Maureen Wadiak.
As the population ages, health care solutions are becoming increasingly complex. Wadiak says many of the seniors the agency serves are outliving their children or the retirement plans they had expected to rely on. Other clients have children who have themselves reached retirement age.
One of the agency’s initiatives involves bringing laptop computers along on house calls to isolated seniors, in order to help them enroll in the new Medicare program for prescription drugs without having to leave their home. Chavez, director of senior services for CSA, said the use of computers has already succeeded in clearing up a lot of confusion and panic that had resulted from the program.
The agency is launching the effort with the help of grants from the Silicon Valley Council on Aging and another from the Valley Foundation.
“What we see is [that] very few seniors really know how to use the Internet,” said Chavez. “Many don’t have computers.”
CSA, along with the El Camino Hospital Health Library and the Mountain View Senior Center, is holding a training session on April 27 at 1 p.m. at the senior center, designed to help seniors learn how to log on to the Internet and to familiarize them with Web sites offering reliable health information.
The agency will offer a second training session at the Los Altos Senior Center on May 9 at 1 p.m. Seniors who are unable to attend either can call Chavez at (650) 968-0836 ext. 131, or El Camino Hospital senior health librarian Jack Black at (650) 940-7374.
E-mail Jon Wiener at jwiener@mv-voice.com
