Program to Aid West Valley Seniors

Canoga Park’s Guadalupe Community Center unveiled an innovative program Thursday designed to help elderly residents of the west San Fernando Valley and their caregivers.

Affiliated with Catholic Charities of Los Angeles, the Guadalupe Center received $440,000 from the U.S. Department of Aging to establish a program called Older Adult Services and Intervention System, or OASIS.

According to the center’s director, Margaret Pontius, the program is designed to help seniors stay in their homes as long as possible by providing them with a broad range of free social services, including needs assessments.

The center has established a “senior fellowship circle” that meets twice a month and is surveying other social service agencies to determine what they see as the needs of older adults, Pontius said.

The OASIS program will eventually provide 80 individuals with professional case managers and offer information and referral services for 500 others, she said.

The population served by the center includes many Spanish-speaking immigrants who may have trouble finding social services elsewhere, Pontius said.

A unique feature of the program, she said, is its use of “faith-based outreach teams.”

“We’re going to recruit eight volunteer teams from area churches, and they don’t have to be Catholic,” she said.

With a gerontologist’s help, the teams, made up of 10 to 15 people each, will be trained to provide individualized services to the elderly clients.

As examples, Pontius said clients might need help getting to a doctor or dentist or “perhaps they’d like somebody to mow their lawn or sweep their porch or get something off a high shelf.”

Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks), who helped obtain funding for the program, praised the center.

“They do an outstanding job in an area that needs services and isn’t always on the top of everybody’s list,” he said.