How We Came To Be: The Seniors Resource Forum

It was a tiny fantasy to start.  The mere seed of an idea.

Could we form a group that would have a single purpose, to bring excellent information to seniors and their families without selling anything?  Without trying to promote business?  Just for the good of the community?

We noted that anyone who wanted information about aging, about aging parents, or about the practical things in this area had to run all over the place to get it.

You could use the internet, and millions of sites would come up.  You could call a local senior center, and get referred to numerous places. You could read books, but they would answer some questions, leaving you to keep searching if you needed more.  In short, learning about aging, how to solve your problems and how to work with aging loved ones took altogether too much work in too many places to be convenient.

Nursing is my background.  In nursing, we call it “fragmentation”; i.e, the disconnected nature of health care information or care.  In plain English, it’s a pain when you can’t find out a lot you need in just one place.  Problems with aging are complex. They are intertwined and cover numerous areas:  legal, healthcare, finance, etc.

From that understanding of fragmentation, a plan emerged.  What if we could make educational information for the public available in one place, make it convenient, and deliver it from experts in multiple fields at that one location?  Then, execution of the plan became a challenge.  How could we find expert volunteers in numerous fields willing to give their time to planning and delivering their information to the public?

As my husband and I have expertise in 3 fields, nursing, law and psychology, it was a start.  We had friends working in the aging field.  Maybe we could ask them to join us in our project.  We knew a great geriatric care manager, a quality  home care provider, and someone with expertise in Medicare Part D insurance.  We called a meeting.  All went well. Despite what anyone might have thought about professionals being unwilling to give of their time, we found generous volunteers who were willing and able to do this.  Seniors Resource Forum was born.

We added a few other volunteers, all in different fields, and rounded out the roster.  Estate planning, affordable housing and fiduciary services added the dimension and different angles we wanted to include.  We started giving educational programs, and the quality was all we had hoped it would be.  Our programs were uniformly well received. We needed greater visibility to keep this going.

The next challenge was to find community partners who would sponsor our educational programs and help publicize our events.  Marin County provided our first, tiny grant, enabling us to make ourselves an official presence.  MarinLink, an umbrella nonprofit sponsor organization, enabled us to become an official nonprofit  and remains our umbrella organization to this day.

We have found generous and willing community partners ever since.  Senior centers, hospice, and others have provided a venue and promotion to help us deliver the high quality information the public needs to help ensure their quality of life and their awareness of how to stay safe.

More recently, we connected with Circle Bank in Corte Madera, under the management of Raymond Quan.  A terrific relationship formed.  With the help of Circle Bank and its consciousness to contribute to the community, we have an ongoing partnership to educate seniors and those who care for them in venues Circle Bank provides.

Every person in Seniors Resource Forum enjoys working with elders, has unique expertise to offer and is generous of spirit enough to donate time and effort to meet our mission.  It is to improve the quality of life of seniors through education.

We look forward to enhancing and expanding our programs, reaching more people and forging a stronger relationship with community in the year ahead.

From the founder of Seniors Resource Forum,
Carolyn Rosenblatt, RN, Attorney, Mediator,
AgingParents.com

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Carolyn L. Rosenblatt, RN, Attorney
Mediator
AgingParents.com
711 Mission Ave.
San Rafael, CA 94901
(415) 459-0413
http://agingparents.com/