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Senior center activities and DFTA monitoring processes
0:51:53
·
178 sec
Councilmember Mealy raises concerns about the activities and monitoring of senior centers. The discussion covers hiring criteria, exercise programs, and DFTA's oversight of these centers.
- Councilmember Mealy expresses concern about the lack of activities in some senior centers
- The Commissioner explains that DFTA has guidelines for hiring and responsibilities in their programs
- DFTA conducts regular monitoring of their programs and maintains a database of this information
- The Commissioner expresses confidence in their service providers and monitoring processes, but welcomes specific feedback on underperforming centers
Darlene Mealy
0:51:53
And this brings me to a question.
0:51:55
How are the centers hiring people?
0:52:01
What kind of criteria should they have dealing with our young adults, senior adults?
Lorraine Cortés-Vázquez
0:52:10
So in our program standards, we have some guidelines in terms of salary scale.
0:52:18
We also have guidelines in terms of responsibility and educational levels for our various positions each one of our programs, whether it's a case manager, whether it's in the OAC.
0:52:35
And that is done through the nonprofit agency.
0:52:41
But there are guidelines that we provide for each one of those.
Darlene Mealy
0:52:44
Is there any databases?
0:52:45
I just have just this one because I think we need a separate entity to start checking on who are who are working in these senior centers.
0:53:00
How often are they giving our seniors exercise?
0:53:04
Have you ever thought about putting that in the budget?
Lorraine Cortés-Vázquez
0:53:08
Council member, each one of our programs gets monitored on a regular basis.
Darlene Mealy
0:53:13
Do you have a database on that?
Lorraine Cortés-Vázquez
0:53:15
Sure we do.
0:53:16
Can you
Darlene Mealy
0:53:16
please forward it because I go into some of them and they are not doing anything and that's shame on us.
0:53:24
Only way to keep our seniors active is to keep them moving.
0:53:29
So if I could go into some senior centers and nothing is going on for a while, we dropping the
Lorraine Cortés-Vázquez
0:53:36
ball.
0:53:37
So I
Darlene Mealy
0:53:37
hope you could send me that information.
Lorraine Cortés-Vázquez
0:53:40
Yeah.
0:53:40
I would ask of you to let us know what senior centers in particular.
Darlene Mealy
0:53:45
I've been visiting a lot
Jose Mercado
0:53:47
of them.
Lorraine Cortés-Vázquez
0:53:47
Okay.
0:53:48
So just tell us where you find that the activities
Darlene Mealy
0:53:51
are not But I'm willing because it it is it's a mandate.
0:53:59
They have worked and saved us really, built this city and now in their golden days they just withering away and I can't handle that anymore.
0:54:11
So please I will give you some of them and then from there if I see any any changing then I can let you know the egregious ones because if we don't do something now we could lose a lot of our adults.
Lorraine Cortés-Vázquez
0:54:28
I I totally respect your your point of view and I look forward to hearing from you.
0:54:35
But I wanna go on the record is that we have a lot of confidence in the service providers and the quality of service that they provide because I have a lot of confidence in the monitoring and oversight of our program officers on those services.