Virtual village looks out for elders

It started with a pair of burned-out light bulbs.

At 78 and living alone, Jean Siegfried couldn’t change the bulbs of a kitchen light fixture in her 9-foot-high ceiling.

“Even if I stood on a ladder and used both hands, I would have had to take the whole fixture down just to get the bulbs in,” she said. Instead, she called the Neighbors Network.

A volunteer who had passed an FBI background check came to her Winter Park, Florida, home, removed the bulbs and drove her to the store to buy replacements. “On top of everything, we had a nice conversation,” Siegfried said.

In an era when roughly 10,000 Americans reach their 65th birthday every day, leaders of the nonprofit Neighbors Network believe theirs is an idea whose time has come.

For a yearly fee of $375 per person or $500 per household, members have access to a network of vetted volunteers who do the sorts of chores that help older people live independently longer – such as changing hard-to-reach light bulbs.

They also flip mattresses, move furniture, do gardening, organize closets, lend a hand with basic home maintenance and pet care and offer much-needed social contact.

The program also offers group trips to the theater or museums, regular luncheons and seminars and workshops. And there’s a referral list of pre-screened for-hire service providers that often give discounts to seniors.

Though the network has recruited only 35 members since its late 2013 launch, supporters see big potential.

“Most older adults will tell you they want to stay in their own homes as long as possible,” said Lynn Phillips Carolan, a spokeswoman for the Winter Park Health Foundation, which has awarded two grants to the fledgling group. “They want to be safe in their homes, they want to be assured they won’t be ripped off, and they want to stay out of assisted-living or nursing homes as long as possible.”

Nationally called the “village” model – as in “It takes a village” – the concept began in Boston in 2002 and has proliferated throughout the Northeast and in California. Now there are nearly 150 such organizations across the country, with 130 more in development.

In Florida, the Neighbors Network – which covers residents of Winter Park, Maitland, Eatonville and a few surrounding streets – is one of the first, along with one in western Palm Beach County. Similar programs are in the planning stages, including a village in Celebration set to launch in late March or April.

“We are very excited,” said Gloria Niec, executive director of the nonprofit Celebration Foundation, which hired a manager for the program last August. “We’re calling it our Thriving in Place village. We didn’t want to call it ‘aging in place,’ because nobody wants to think they’re aging. But we just had a birthday party for one of our residents, who is 100 and still lives in her own home.”

In Celebration – where there’s no senior center, no YMCA and no town nearby that offers those things – Niec says interest is strong, though the program has yet to set membership fees.

It also has yet to iron out details, since each organization is slightly different. Celebration may include transportation, for instance; the Winter Park-Maitland network offers it for an additional fee.

Membership typically begins with an application and initial in-home interview, when a volunteer finds out what the resident needs most.

“There’s no set limit on the number of times someone can call for help,” said Annette Kelly, a geriatric nurse practitioner who heads the advisory council for the Neighbors Network. “But if they want someone to clean their home every day, they need to hire a maid, and we’ll help them find someone trustworthy. On the other hand, if they just need someone once every two weeks, we can help with that. We haven’t had anyone try to abuse the system, but that’s why the communication is so important.”

Recently, the group began offering free three-month trial memberships and will soon grant scholarships for low-income residents who can’t afford the regular membership fees.

Kelly said those factors should spur growth in a demographic that may be reluctant to sign up for a variety of reasons.

“I think the idea resonates with a lot of people philosophically,” she said. “They think, ‘Well, this will be good for me when I’m old, which certainly isn’t now.’ ”

Natalie Galucia, director of the national Village to Village Network, a peer organization, said the gradual growth curve is common.

“Very often it takes a couple of years to really get off the ground,” she said. “People don’t understand why it might be important to them and what makes it different from the other resources they already know about. Then they talk to Sally down the street, who loves it, and that word-of-mouth is what sells them.”

Although some villages are affiliated with hospitals – which see a pool of potential consumers – most are community-driven and motivated by helping, not making money. No one at the Neighbors Network earns a salary. Membership fees cover the cost of background checks, setting up computer programs that match volunteers to members, mailing costs and hosting workshops.

“I went to one of Annette’s first presentations, and it took me about a minute and a half to see what a great idea it was,” said Kathleen Mason, 63, who joined with her husband. Her 93-year-old mother-in-law is also a member. “I have two children – one who lives in Florida and one in Washington, D.C. – and it’s not like I can call them just because I need something from up in the attic. As a society, we are ripe for this idea.”

The AARP agrees.

“It’s something we see as a way people can stay in their own homes and have some dignity and a safety net,” said Jeff Johnson, state director of AARP Florida.

But the biggest benefit, some say, is the social connectivity it provides.

“The value of that is hard to measure,” said Diana Silvey, a program director for the Winter Park Health Foundation who pushed for the initial grant to the network. “We know from the research that these organizations reduce isolation – and that reduces anxiety and depression and leads to better sleep.”

At Christmas, teams of volunteers helped members put up holiday decorations, for instance. Kathleen Mason welcomed the idea.

“They got these decorations down from storage that hadn’t seen the light of day in 15 years,” she said. “They were done within an hour, and four volunteers I had never met before shared a lovely afternoon with us. It was wonderful.”