Opinion: Protecting services for seniors

A recent financial review has raised concern about the allocation of resources at Neighborly Senior Services, Pinellas' groundbreaking agency for the elderly. The last few months have seen more than 100 caregivers laid off, with plans to leave 25 more positions unfilled. Laying off direct service providers, rather than cutting administrative costs first, is a troubling practice for an agency so critically needed in our community.

For many Pinellas seniors, the caregivers who visit to check blood pressure, demonstrate the proper way to give an insulin shot and help with housecleaning, are often the only people standing between preserved independence and costly residence in a nursing facility.

When a funding glitch cost Senior Services more than $1-million earlier this year, officials responded with layoffs. Remaining workers added 15 to 20 new clients to their average workload of 70 cases. Two months later, 82 home health care workers were let go when the service was discontinued. The cutbacks specifically affect Medicaid patients, the poorest seniors served. Yet leading up to this time of budgetary uncertainty, Fredric Buchholtz, the president of Senior Services, enjoyed a larger salary than the contract authorized, plus a company car and personal travel budget equal to the shared budget of his nine-member finance department.

Buchholtz responded to the auditor's report with a plan to cut about $250,000 in administrative costs such as computers and information services staff. These cuts, while painful, seem far preferable to reducing the direct caregiving force, especially for poor seniors with few options. By comparison, estimates project that spinning off services for Medicaid clients will save the agency only about $150,000 this year. With fewer caregivers, more seniors could end up leaving their homes for the short-staffed, underfunded nursing home system that is already under stress.

It would be a shame to see service contracts shift away from trusted groups such as Neighborly Senior Services, which boasts an impressive 35-year track record of helping the elderly and running the nation's first Meals on Wheels program. But facing similar budget constraints on a smaller scale, Pasco's agency for the elderly has shown that many of the pitfalls bedeviling Pinellas can be avoided. Prudent planning and placing a priority on service delivery can enable such venerable nonprofits to keep doing their important work, even when help from the state and federal levels is getting harder to come by.

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