SLO County’s Master Plan on Aging gains steam with first round of community input 

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• PHOTO TAKEN FROM SLO COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARIES FLYER
• MORE TO LEARN Senior centers and public libraries across the county helped document community voices in the SLO Master Plan On Aging by hosting town halls for senior citizens, adults living with disabilities, and their caregivers from July 17 to 19.

SLO County’s year-old effort to spot local hurdles for its senior citizen population recently received its first set of survey responses from residents.

While survey lead and national consulting firm Health Management Associates needed to review responses collected from July 17 to 19 during town halls, Associate Principal Michael Butler told New Times that community members from all over the county expressed their concerns during the discussion stages.

“We had a lot of worries about caregiving,” Butler said. “I think there are a lot of worries and misinformation about caregiving. People are really fearful that they’re going to need it, and they don’t really know how to access it.”

People also asked for more centralized access and coordination of information, resources, and support services. Butler added that community members often don’t understand that a decentralized system exists by design so that individual issues can be tackled by the respective city, county, state, and/or federal agency. 

Participants highlighted mobility and transportation issues too, underscoring a desire for vans and shuttles that provide door-to-door services and require less time to arrange in advance. They also spoke of wanting a patient advocate to help aging residents move through the medical system. Town hall attendees expressed frustration with the lack of health care professionals, which increases wait times, prompting people to travel outside the county to find care. 

“People talked about the epidemic of loneliness and how we can do a whole lot more to connect people to social activities that are age-appropriate,” Diaz said. 

More than 100 people participated in the Health Management Associates survey conducted at senior centers in Paso Robles and Morro Bay; at libraries in Atascadero, SLO, and Nipomo; and at United Church of Christ in SLO. 

The consulting firm collected data with the help of a $199,826 grant that SLO County received in summer 2023 from the California Department of Aging’s
$3 million Local Aging and Disability Action Planning Grant Program. 

According to SLO County Adult Protective Services Program Manager Robert Diaz, Health Management Associates received $182,535 of the county grant, which covers the full cost of implementing the grant program and the initial planning and development of the San Luis Obispo Master Plan on Aging.

“The consultant services include but are not limited to their staff time, bilingual translation services, the development of the surveys, advisory committee meeting facilitation, program outreach, community meeting facilitation, social/traditional media awareness advertising (in development), materials costs, mileage, limited incentives (first 400 survey participants) such as gift cards,” Diaz said via email.

The remaining money will pay for the county’s administrative and overhead costs to provide staff program coordination of the grant, the consultant, and the master plan’s advisory committee during the grant period from July 1, 2023, to March 31, 2025.

With the first round of surveys done, the consulting firm is already thinking of ways to improve for the next round from Aug. 14 to 16.

“We’re trying to do outreach to the Spanish-speaking community and … trying to work with Promotores networks,” Butler said. “I’ve gotten feedback that we need to schedule some of the meetings a little bit later into the evening.”

Butler added that the consulting firm wants to conduct more survey meetings in parts of the county that got left out in July, like Cambria and sections of South County.

The master plan project wants to collect surveys until the end of September. Survey participants must ideally be senior citizens, adults living with disabilities, and their caregivers. But all residents can attend the community events and provide their perspectives on aging in SLO County. The collected data will be brought before the advisory committee to begin creating feasible solutions to the identified problems.

Interested participants can email county program manager Diaz at [email protected] with the subject line “SLOMPA Survey Interest” or “SLOMPA Support.” They must include their name, email, preferred contact information, and the city they live in. Participants who want to fill out the survey online will receive a link and a QR code in English and Spanish. Project leaders will reach out to interested community members for in-person events that are scheduled for mid-August.

“The SLOMPA [San Luis Obispo Master Plan On Aging] project … is working to connect to community members outside of these in-person events,” Diaz said. “The SLOMPA effort is always looking for community and local business support to help spread awareness of the SLOMPA and to assist us in collecting survey data.”