News
Important Aging Prisoners Report To Be Released This Winter
- By: USAging
- On: 11/20/2016 14:53:09
- In: Policy & Advocacy
With people age 50-plus representing the fastest growing segment of America's prison population, some AAAs are developing highly effective programs to help meet their special needs.
This winter, we will release a new report that details the challenges and opportunities the Aging Network faces in addressing this issue. Last spring, over 200 AAAs completed a survey to help us understand the extent of their involvement in helping olders prisoners in their communities. We specifically wanted to hear more about in-prison or reentry programs that were specially developed for this purpose.
For example, we learned that, as part of their Medicaid program, NorthWest Senior and Disability Services offers medical assistance, SNAP and case managers for inmates in a five-county area in Oregon, who would otherwise make the transition from prison to the community with little or no support. Some survey respondents said that they use existing programs to address this issue, like Senior Connection, The Capital Area Agency on Aging which has expanded the benefits of their Stanford Chronic Disease Self-Management program to the older prisoner population.
The final report will contain more success stories like these, along with key findings on the extent to which the Aging Network is either currently making the aging prisoner population a priority or would like to do so in the future.