It continues
to be an honor being involved with the Congregate Housing Services
Program (CHSP). Everyday the Laconia Housing Authority Staff witness
the benefits that this program provides our residents and has provided
since October 1993.
Our
program provides thirty residents with two meals-365 days a year,
laundry and housekeeping services weekly, emergency response systems,
personal care assistance, and transportation to and from medical
appointments. We have served nearly 200 residents since this program
began. Today, the average age of the residents that we serve in
the CHSP is 80-86.
In
1993 when the program began at Sunrise Towers, many residents had
chosen to leave the Public Housing Facility to enter local nursing
homes because they were experiencing difficulties with activities
of daily living. The CHSP has been marketed in a way that residents
desire the benefits of the program. During the past fifteen years
residents have witnessed how the CHSP has provided much needed services
to their friends and neighbors allowing them the opportunity to
age in place, in their own private apartments surrounded by items
that reflect their personal histories.
This
program provides services on a daily basis which ultimately provides
the residents another option to early nursing home placement. This
program has saved millions of tax dollars in our community; we can
only imagine the dollars saved around the country during these past
thirty years.
One of the first residents approved for the program in October of
1993, was considering nursing home placement because it was difficult
for her five daughters (living in different parts of the state)
to meet all her needs. Each daughter had become responsible for
the mother's needs: One daughter was responsible for grocery shopping,
another for financial matters, and another for housekeeping and
laundry, another for transportation to medical appointments etc.
When she joined the Congregate Housing Services Program she became
healthier, and her daughters could come and visit and enjoy quality
time with their mother. She lived at our facilities for ten years.
This woman loved every moment that she received Congregate Housing
Services. If she had chosen to enter the local county nursing home
the cost to provide care for this woman would have funded Congregate
Housing Services for thirty individuals in our facility for five
years.
Laconia Housing Authority
25 Union Avenue
Laconia, NH 03246
603-524-2112
http://www.laconiahousing.org/
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