At today’s Senior Citizens Housing task force meeting, attendees focused on caregivers for our island’s senior citizens.
PNC’s Althea Engman has more…
According to Charlene San Nicholas, the Senior Citizen’s Administration at the Division of Senior Citizens, program funding is used to provide help to their supportive services, two of which are case management service and caregiver support program.
Case Management service conducts various assessments and reassessments of individuals who may be a bit frail and essentially need the community’s help.
One such service the program provides is the funding of housing for those who are at least 60 years old. Such assistance is given only to those who meet certain criteria and is limited to 400 qualified applicants.
Furthermore, applicants are also eligible for the National Family Caregiver support program.
This program also extends to people who 18 years or older and care for an elderly person 60 years of age or older. Also qualified for the program is an elderly caregiver 55 years of age or older who cares for either a child or a person with a disability who is younger than sixty.
During the meeting, Margaret Uchima, Dean of the School of Nursing at the University of Guam, brought up that although there are current services that help out the seniors of our island, it is very limited.
In fact, both the University of Guam and Guam Community College hold caregiving training programs, but there is sometimes a shortage of nursing staff can cause issues on the amount of people that can be trained.
The purpose for the meeting was for the task force to assess what needed to be done.
At the end of the meeting, Senator Amanda Shelton said she will use what was discussed and figure out how to better help these departments, organizations and of course the elderly in the near future.
