Needy Seniors Stymied : Growing Population Finding Fewer Services

Elsie Chespak knew she needed help after she could no longer read labels on cans of food. So the 83-year-old woman, who is legally blind, put an ad in the newspaper offering free accommodations in her two-bedroom Leisure World condominium to anyone who would agree to prepare a meal for her.

She got no response.

Chespak, who recently suffered a stroke, then tried a local nonprofit group that delivers meals to homebound seniors. The agency politely turned her down, saying dwindling funds have limited the number of elderly clients they can take.

“It makes me feel depressed,” Chespak lamented. “I’m stymied. I never knew it would come to this.”

Chespak’s predicament is becoming more common in the county as the rapidly increasing elderly population is reeling from the effects of a lingering recession, state budget cuts and a lack of financial support from the private sector, authorities say.

While the county’s population of residents 60 or older has skyrocketed during the last decade, money for senior programs has not increased in the past nine years, county officials said.

Peggy Weatherspoon, director of the county’s Area Agency on Aging, said nonprofit groups that deliver meals to frail seniors can no longer meet the population’s growing needs.

With a $9-million annual budget, the agency coordinates day care, transportation, employment and a wide range of other services for about 300,000 people 60 and older. The meals programs are among the agency’s most salient services, constituting 55% of the agency’s budget.

But money to feed the county’s elderly is becoming increasingly scarce. Last year, the state slashed $64,000 of the $800,000 normally budgeted for county nutritional programs.

Weatherspoon and other agency officials are bracing for more cuts this year, even though the 1990 census showed that the county’s senior population has tripled in the past decade.

During the past year, providers of the meals have merged several sites--churches, community centers, schools or other spots where meals are prepared for the elderly--to cut costs. In addition, dozens of shut-ins who received meals at home have been eliminated from the programs.

Officials say they can only guess how many seniors no longer receive home-delivered meals because of budget cuts.

Sharon Phelps, operations manager of Feedback Foundation, an Anaheim-based agency that serves about 535 meals a day, said her group has trimmed about 65 participants from the program through attrition.

“We try to take the least harmful approach,” Phelps said. “When someone dies or no longer needs the program, we cut that position by not seeking out a new person with the need.”

Dana Biro, director of Senior Meals and Services in Garden Grove, which provides about 300,000 meals a year to seniors in central Orange County, said her agency has adopted tighter screening procedures for applicants.

“If there are friends and families that can assist the applicant, then we tell them to,” Biro said. “We will admit people only if they don’t have any other support systems.”

Chespak, for example, has a 58-year-old son, Walt, who brings her meals most of the time.

She was forced to cook for herself when her son was recently laid off his job and had to undergo bypass surgery, Chespak said.

“I didn’t know what I was doing,” she said. “My hair caught fire once because I didn’t know I was so close” to the flame.

“So to be safe, I ate a lot of cereal and bananas,” Chespak said. “I would have done anything for a little mash potatoes, some peas and carrots and a little pudding.”

Weatherspoon said she and the nonprofit groups that deliver meals to shut-ins and at senior centers worry that many seniors in the county are not receiving proper nutrition.

About 50 groups provide up to 2,500 meals to seniors every day, but Weatherspoon said the county needs to provide 30,000 meals a day--about 10% of the county’s senior population.

Weatherspoon cited a recent federal study concluding that 85% of all older Americans have been found to be at risk of malnutrition.

Nonprofit groups in the county are “stretching their resources thin to help meet the needs,” Weatherspoon said.

Maria Burgos, coordinator of Home Delivered Meals, which provides meals to seniors in South County, said most people who need meals moved to the county about 25 years ago, when the cost of living was relatively low.

The average home meal recipient is in their late 70s, lives alone, earns less than $15,000 a year and suffers from illnesses or frailty that prevents them from going to the grocery store. Others may be too depressed to cook for themselves, while some simply forget to eat, Weatherspoon said.

The volunteers do more than just deliver meals to shut-ins. They also provide aid to people who are hungry for a little attention. Some volunteers help the elderly with their laundry or take them out to lunch.

Peggy Stevens, 77, a Leisure World resident who has been receiving meals for almost two years, said the volunteers are the only people she sees for weeks.

“I would be very lonely if they didn’t come in to say hello,” said Stevens, who suffers from crippling arthritis in her ankles and cannot stand long enough to cook.

“It feels good to know that someone cares about me,” she said. “They’re my link with the outside world, because I can’t see outside anymore.”

Although the county’s senior meals program faces further budgetary pressure, Weatherspoon encouraged the elderly to continue coming to the sites where food is served.

The agency receives 56 cents from the Department of Agriculture for every meal served, so fewer people attending would hurt the program further, she said.

“Some older people feel it’s almost like a patriotic duty to stop coming when they hear about other poor people who can’t get meals,” she said. “It’s a self-sacrifice that tends to hurt us.”

Weatherspoon said she hoped donations from private groups could bolster the agency’s budget so more shut-ins could be fed. But she gave up hope after the Senior Resources Foundation, a private group formed to raise $250,000 for senior programs, closed its Santa Ana offices, saying it could not justify the operation.

The group spent $100,000 in a bid to raise $250,000 from local businesses, but it took in only a “few thousand dollars,” said Milton Morris, a Fountain Valley man who was co-chairman of the defunct group.

“It’s appalling to know that most people, especially in business, believe that seniors in Orange County are all wealthy enough and don’t need anything,” he said.

“Well, the truth is that there are thousands and thousands of them below the poverty level,” he said, “and we better take notice now . . . because their numbers are increasing every day.”

Senior Support

The largest share of the Orange County Area Agency on Aging’s $9-million budget goes to nutrition. A look at the agency’s budget, how it has grown and types of services it provides:

Budget Breakdown, 1991-92 Nutrition: 55% Supportive services: 29% Administration: 8% Other: 8%

Client Services, 1991-92* Meals, nutrition: 40% Information referrals: 26% Legal services, mediation: 16% Minority services: 9% In-home services: 5% Other: 4% Source: Orange County Area Agency on Aging