Yesterday and today I spent many hours sitting on a committee at my local elder services agency interviewing agency applicants for Title III financial grants for 2008. I have virtually no background in social services; I got involved in this after spending a lot of volunteer time last year helping with Medicare Part D support. The agency liked the work I did and didn't want to lose me, so invited me to join their Advisory Council. I've been going to meetings for several months, but this is the first time I've gotten involved in the nitty-gritty.
I just wanted to write about a few of my impressions.
First, there are an awful lot of people trying their darndest to do good work for people on incredibly minimal budgets. My previous experience with proposals was in the software industry, where hourly billing is in the $100-plus range (and this was 10 years ago, so goodness knows what it is now). But these people were getting $8, $12, $20, maybe $30 or slightly more for a supervisor or registered nurse. Nobody is making money here.
We heard about projects for Alzheimer's coaching and ESL training and medication management and minority outreach and mental health counselling and cultural immersion and adaptive aids for low-vision elders and exercise programs and caregiver support and aging in place and respite care. We will also be funding legal aid services and medical transportation (which actually uses up the majority of our Title III funding).
We heard lots of good ideas and lots of good work we'd like to support, but of course we won't be able to do all of it and will have to turn some people down. I've figured out that the total annual funding our agency has to distribute (for an 8-town service area) is approximately equivalent to what is spent in 2 minutes of the Iraq war.
This sucks.
I know we all know that the priorities of the current administration are just plain wrong, but today it was something I could not look away from.