Long-Term Care - Illinois General Assembly

The Putnam County center loans medical equipment free-of-charge, and that service is for all
ages. It has been an extremely important service.
Senior centers promote healthy aging and community involvement. The Putnam County Senior
Center relies a great deal on volunteers. The entire staff is part-time, due to limited funds, so
the volunteers are extremely important. The director is part-time. The entire transportation
program is done by volunteers using their own vehicles and volunteering their time.
Putnam County is a rural county without any public means of transportation. There is no
hospital, so there is no rehabilitation, chemotherapy, or radiation treatments. Those all have to
be done outside the county, so there is a need to transport seniors outside the county to have
that done. The center is transporting seniors several times a week, and some seniors are
everyday transports. It's completely done by volunteer drivers.
There is only one grocery store in the entire county, so even getting groceries is an issue. It's a
very, very important service for the seniors and for a lot of people in the area. There is a sense
of isolation that seniors could feel, if these services were not available. That can be
overwhelming, and many times can lead to depression. That is where the Putnam County
Senior Center and many other senior centers come into play.
The outreach worker calls on the seniors in their homes, lets them know what services are
available, identifies what services they need, and she checks on them. This is a link to the
outside world. The center has helped seniors with just about any kind of problem imaginable.
There have been calls at home from 6 a.m. on Sunday morning, to 10 p.m. on Friday night.
Hundreds of senior citizens come to senior centers each day, and they come for many reasons.
They have been able to maintain themselves in independent living. They are aging gracefully
and dealing with the changes with minimal support.
Senior centers promote healthy lifestyles and emotional well-being. The center’s doors are
open, offering a broad range of activities and services that meet older persons' needs. Many
seniors will not need additional services, because the center is helping them meet basic needs.
Seniors want to stay active and have choices. That is a big issue, having choices. The senior
center gives them a place to go to and meet new friends and receive support.
Senior centers are the front line of preventative support to our aging population. They can spot
changes, crisis and isolation before any other long-term care provider in the continuum. They
can intervene early with information and support services to lift that senior out of depression and
out of that isolation and crisis. Centers help seniors to maintain the lifestyles with dignity and
respect, and that is an essential issue. Seniors want and need to feel that they still have some
control over their own lives.
The Putnam County Senior Center is located in Standard, Illinois — a town with a population of
300. The center provides services for the entire county. Putnam County is the smallest county
in the state, which means that it gets the smallest funding allocation. It received partial funding
through grants from the Western Illinois Area Agency on Aging under Title III of the Older
Americans Act. It is a free-standing senior center, which means it owns a building, and it's up to
the center to maintain it and keep everything going, which is becoming more and more an issue
and a problem, as it is with most senior centers across the state. In a very small county with
very few resources, it is becoming more and more of a struggle.
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