6. PARTNER WITH CORPORATIONS AND CHURCHES- Lost productivity related to caring for aging parents is a threat to the bottom line of every community business. Work with both small and large businesses to establish a Parent Care Network Resource that is available on line and accessible by everyone's employees. Corporations would gladly contribute a small share for a big community benefit. Churches are the new eldercare first responders. Work with them to help develop home care services, parish nurse programs, and assisted living and day care facilities.
7. DEVELOP A CARING CITY- The greatest opportunity a city has is to encourage its citizens to reach out to the people near them to lend a hand. If each person would "adopt" another person who is need of help whether it be bringing meals, medicine, walking a pet, getting groceries, etc. a huge burden could be taken off municipal services. It's easy as a service club or religious institution to send a team for two weeks halfway around the world. The entrance is easy. The exit is easy. The time is defined. It's much more difficult to make that same effort a continuous committment in your own community. Go across the street to lend a hand before you go across an ocean. Just become Each others "Each Other".
A city that does not anticipate the need to support its seniors will soon find itself in the most difficult of situations: the need to support an aging population without the accompanying tax reveue to support it. The new purchaser of a senior's home still continues to pay the property taxes which go into the general fund of a city but the city now has two demands on its municipal services: the aging senior and the purchaser of the senior's home.
Aging citizens within a community will soon begin to affect property values, tax bases, demands on municipal and health care services, and the overall attractiveness of the community as a place for people to live and retire. Just as caring for an elderly parent can impoverish and exhaust an individual care giver it can exhaust and impoverish a community.
You are responsible for caring for your aging parents inside your communities. Get on with it.
