Grant to Match Older Volunteers With Disabled Children

Los Angeles has been selected as one of eight metropolitan areas to share a four-year, $3.76-million grant for the development of programs to match older volunteers with chronically ill or disabled children, the National Council on the Aging announced Thursday.

Under the Family Friends program, men and women 55 and older will provide support services for young patients during visits to the children’s homes at least once a week. Officials of the Jewish Family Service and UCLA Medical Center, which will receive $475,000 over four years, said they expect to begin training about 60 volunteers within three months. Once the program is under way, a new class of volunteers will be recruited and trained every six months, or as often as necessary to maintain a pool of at least 60 volunteers working with a minimum of 70 children and their families.

“We think it’s an appealing program,” said Frances Ellett, deputy director of the UCLA Medical Center. The children who will participate in the program will be selected from among those discharged from the medical center who are not expected to be returning to the hospital frequently, Ellett said.

The volunteers will be recruited from local senior citizens’ groups, and their expenses will be paid so that elderly people living on fixed incomes will not be discouraged from participating.

“The Family Friends program exemplifies our role as a developer of opportunities for older people to stay involved in the life of their community and to remain useful to others,” said Jack Ossofsky, president of the National Council on the Aging. “We anticipate that these projects will be the basis for greater cooperation between community agencies serving the old and those serving the young.”

Program officials say that the intergenerational program will allow the volunteers to use their training, experience and spare time to help children and their parents deal with the difficulties of illness or disability. Volunteers will be trained in social and emotional support, recreational and educational activities and community services available to families.

The program is funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a Princeton, N.J., group that seeks to improve the nation’s health care.