Allan Appel Photo
East Rock Village’s Ann Feinstein and Bitsie Clark.
The other day Bitsie Clark fielded a call from a man needing a person simply to converse with his wife, a former academic struggling with incipient Alzheimer’s, when he’s away at work. In walked Ann Feinstein, a volunteer who agreed. The husband expressed a deep gratitude with a box of exotic citrus fruits for the holidays.
Welcome to East Rock Village, the evolving two-year-old organization dedicated to helping people in the Greater New Haven area age in their homes with radiating networks of friendship and support, both practical and spiritual.
The organization, headed by former Arts Council chief and Downtown Alderwoman Bitsie Clark, marked its second year with the announcement that it has matched an anonymous $100,000 grant with an equal amount.
In March Clark announced her retirement from aldermanic life in order to have time to helm East Rock Village.
East Rock Village’s services coordinator Therese Dellucia, at a computer soon to be replaced.
Click here for an article on how area seniors in 2009 began forging a not-for-profit community that combines vetted nursing and home care services along with help that ranges from rides to doctors’ to paying bills, to de-cluttering that closet to exercise and contra dancing.
And click here for the story of a similar group emerging in Branford.
The infusion of money marks a red-letter development for East Rock Village, which projects it can become self-sustaining with a membership of 300 households. Currently it has 80. It will use the money, along with another $5,000 raised from the“parent” organization, Village to Village Network, to develop a strategic and marketing plan.
Clark said the fundraising was done by the all-volunteer board in a blistering three-month period. She particularly hailed the board President Jane Jervis, a former college president, and former banker Sheilah Rostow, the vice president for leading the way.
Clark said that East Rock Village and all the “villages” are largely following in the footsteps of the pioneering model, Beacon Hill Village in Boston.
“Every one of these villages start in academic communities, and all start with neighbors and friends.”
East Rock Village also began in that eponymous area and had an initial core of many former Yale University and other academic retirees.
To make it work, that is, to become economically viable, the organization needs to extend its reach geographically and demographically.
Since its founding, it has extended to embrace members, including many widows and widowers, in North Haven and Orange, among other parts of Greater New Haven.
East Rock Village operates out of a small office at 291 Whitney Ave.
Fees are $600 for a single person and $800 for a couple. That can be a steep price for people on fixed incomes. About 10 percent of the households are subsidized, which means the fees are roughly half.
Clark said that when the organization nears its projected 300 members, it hopes to be able to subsidize up to one quarter of the members and include people whose only income is social security.
But how to do that and working to market the village in different communities depends on the planning.
The current staff consists of Clark as executive director and Therese DeLucia, all augmented by a growing stable of volunteers from board members on down.
Clark and others transport people to doctors’ appointments, sit in on consultations if asked to do so by members’ children in distant cities.
Clark has even overseen the installation of air-conditioners in the home of a member returning home from a hospital stay on the hottest day of last summer.
The efforts to market membership may extend to Bethany, Cheshire, and even Milford, said Clark.
That depends on the outcome of the strategic planning, marketing, and info technology chapters that the young organization for seniors is about to open.
These seniors are not wasting time. RFPs for consultants in all these areas have recently been sent out.
Rostow said she expects planning to be complete by this June.
I'm not sure I see the value for the membership fee. For $600/$800, you get a concierge service, which is basically referrals to paid services, social events, and volunteer services such as pet care or transportation to shopping. If they are volunteer services, why impose a fee for access?
These services fall short of what's necessary to age in place. To stay out of institutionalized care, people need home health aides and homemakers, which go for around $25/hour on a continuing basis.
Now if the Village could supply something like that on a reduced fee or voluntary basis, they'd be on to something. This shows the limits of volunteerism and the need for national health care that meets the needs of the aging.
The $600/$800 would be better spent on a ticket to emigrate to a country like Japan or Finland where these services are part of the basic social contract.
I don't mean to offend, but explain what I'm missing here.