Pittsburgh Catholic Newspaper - News and Features

News & Features

Care for elderly evolves with changing needs
archived from: 2006-09-21
by: C.T. Maier

Last week, the Pittsburgh Catholic began a look at some of the bigger issues facing the region’s aging population. This week, the paper looks at some of the many things the Catholic community is doing to meet the emerging needs.

In an area with one of the highest percentages of senior citizens in the country, the Catholic Church in Pittsburgh ministers to elderly people and their families through a whole host of programs — parish programs, Catholic long-term care facilities and non-profits focusing on specific populations, Catholic housing for low-income seniors, diocesan-wide programs by Catholic Charities and special programs by Mercy Health System, to name just a few.

In all of these programs, the Catholic identity is clear in the demand to care for the whole person, body, mind and spirit, respect for life and the commitment to care for all persons, regardless of faith, ethnicity or need.

“It’s our belief that it’s not only a matter of care but also about care in the Catholic tradition,” says Father Lawrence DiNardo, diocesan vicar for canonical services and a member of the board of directors for the Catholic Long-Term Care Network, an association of nine Catholic nursing homes in southwestern Pennsylvania. “The reason why the church institutions exist is to provide the spiritual dimension.”

But while the principles remain the same, all of these programs are changing to meet the needs of the changing elderly population they serve. While news coverage focuses on problems and crises, Pittsburgh’s seniors remain dynamic, and the church in Pittsburgh is helping them stay that way.

Better health care and longer lives have meant a more active senior population looking to live life to the fullest, said Bobbi Taylor, administrator of Challenges: Options in Aging, a program in Lawrence County operated by Catholic Charities. When Taylor first started working with seniors three decades ago, getting older meant crafts and bingo. Today, it means something completely different.

The changes are most evident at Challenges’ cutting-edge senior center. Built in a former Giant Eagle in New Castle, the center has an indoor walking track, a fitness room that serves up to 300 people a day and a menu of activities from tai chi to wellness classes.

“We’re in a proactive mode,” Taylor said. “We are really trying to be responsive to how people age now.”

Aging in place

Aging now also means aging at home, what caregivers throughout the spectrum call “aging in place.” Once people thought growing old meant going to a nursing home — the “old folks home” of long ago — for years on end. That’s no longer the case, and many Catholic providers are trying to expand people’s understanding of their options.

“Some people think, ‘I’m X number of years old, so I need to go to a nursing home,’” Taylor said. “We want to say, ‘Don’t!’”

The movement away from nursing homes as a universal solution to aging is partly financial. Giving care to people in their homes is cheaper than having to provide housing, too. But the drive toward aging in place primarily comes from a realization throughout the health care community that being at home and having friends and church nearby helps older people live longer and better lives.

In the aging in place model, nursing homes are still important but are more specialized institutions, dealing with people who need constant care, either because they are suffering from Alzheimer’s or dementia or because they are just too frail to be left unattended. But for everyone else, home is the place to be because it keeps seniors as connected and active as possible for as long as possible.

“The home is a healthier place to be (for seniors), when they’re at home with their friends and family,” said Dr. Joanne Andiorio, president of The Community at Holy Family Manor. “It is healthier spiritually, emotionally, psychologically.”

Andiorio operates two franchises of Comfort Keepers in the west and east of Pittsburgh. A national franchise that specializes in in-home non-medical care for elderly, Comfort Keepers offers both companion care — help with cleaning, meals and errands, for instance — and personal care — assistance in bathing, dressing and other tasks — though it doesn’t offer medical care, like skilled nursing or physical therapy.

Home medical care, though, is still an essential part of the aging in place approach. Patients are coming out of the hospital sooner than before, and often before they are completely healed, said Geralyn Lee, a registered nurse for Mercy Home Health, a part of the Mercy Health System tasked with bringing medical care into the home. The adjustment can be difficult, and many need help not only healing and getting used to their new medications but also navigating Medicare and Medicaid, especially the new Medicare prescription drug benefits.

The importance of the parish

For many Catholic seniors, the parish is especially important. It provides a community, a spiritual center and a place where their gifts are still needed.

Father David Taylor, pastor of St. Charles Lwanga Parish in Pittsburgh’s East End and advisory board member of the Allegheny County Area Agency on Aging, finds that many of his most active parishioners are older people, participating in every aspect of parish life from the food bank to parish council.

For those who are less able to get around, the parish works to keep them connected, offering transportation to those who can come to church and visiting the ones who can’t with the parish bulletin or copies of the Pittsburgh Catholic. “We’re continuing to involve them in the life of the church,” Father Taylor said, “because that’s what they enjoy the most.”

Seniors at St. Charles Lwanga form a tight community and look out for each other, Father Taylor said. Feeding people spiritually, as well as socially and physically, makes a real difference. “In addition to receiving the holy Eucharist, I’ve found many who are just lonely,” he said. “A lot of seniors are living longer, and with the illness in old age, getting out and being with people is important. That can mean the difference between living and dying.”

Some parishes also get involved through programs like Mercy Health System’s parish and congregational nursing program. For Joy Burt Conti, the program’s manager, the parish nurse is a caregiver, an advocate and an organizer, someone who not only tells people about good nutrition but also energizes the parish food bank to help put food on people’s tables. In many places in the diocese, parish nursing is making a real difference throughout the community.

“Health ministry has a multiplying effect,” she said. “One of the responsibilities of the parish nurse is to encourage all the members of a parish to live out their baptismal call to help others.”

For many who work with seniors in the diocese, like Bobbi Taylor in Lawrence County, the real joy isn’t seeing seniors survive but thrive, seeing them not only getting better, but also growing in new ways.

“I’ve heard many stories from people who have gotten better,” she said, “people who couldn’t carry a bag of groceries when they started and are walking the track today. They tell me, ‘This is the best thing that ever happened to me.’”

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