CLEVELAND — Cuyahoga County announced Friday that it is partnering with several local churches to help connect seniors to county services.
From difficulty getting around to isolation and food insecurity, seniors face many challenges with which the county said its services can help. According to county officials, there are 272,000 seniors living in Cuyahoga County, making up more than 20 percent of the population. That number continues to grow.
“By 2030, they will be 31 percent of the population in this county,” Reverend Lorenzo Norris, pastor of Concord Baptist Church, said. “Seniors are living longer, and we want to make sure they have a better quality of life.”
Norris, who is also the president and CEO of the Cleveland Clergy Alliance, said his organization and the county believe churches are some of the best places for seniors to get information about county services. In partnership with the county, ten churches are deploying “navigators” to help seniors connect to services that are already available to them.
“We want this region, Northeast Ohio, to be senior-friendly to our seniors,” Norris said.
For the last 18 years, Linda Sheets Pratt said she has lived at Mount Auburn Manor, a building owned by the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority. Inside her apartment, she is able to cook her own meals and said she’s thankful she’s never had to go hungry. She’s received help at times from local food banks and helps make sure her neighbors get enough to eat, too.
“The people don’t have enough to get there to feed everyone. So that’s why I try to get transportation and a truck to come here to make sure everybody got enough food,” Sheets Pratt said. “Because a lot of people don’t have food stamps, a lot of people don’t have no income and I try to make sure by care and by the grace of God that everybody gets something to eat.”
Sheets Pratt said she uses the community kitchen at Mount Auburn Manor about twice a month to cook donated food and helps feed more than 100 people who live in her building or nearby. That includes Lydia Calhoun, another senior who retired nearly 20 years ago.
“It was such a good thing that she done, you know, to help everybody out in the building,” Calhoun said. “I’m retired. But yet, it’s still, it was good for me cause I only get a check once a month.”
Calhoun said that sometimes she helps Sheets Pratt with her outreach. Both women said they were thankful for the partnership between the county and local churches, believing it would help them continue to feed their neighbors who don’t have enough to eat.
Without help, Calhoun said many people would have a much more difficult time.
“It would be kind of bad on some people,” Calhoun said. “So many people don’t have jobs or the resources.”
Among the ten churches participating in the Connecting Seniors to Services program is Saint Aloysius/Saint Agatha Parish, where an event was held Friday to announce the partnership. Thirteen other churches are helping support the efforts.
The partnership will not cost taxpayers any additional money, according to Armond Budish, the county executive.
“These are our parents, these are our grandparents,” Budish said. “These are the people who took care of us for so many years. They gave us everything.”
Budish said the partnership is part of the county’s budget and is simply helping seniors access services already available to them.
