Frayed safety net

The question of who will care for the frail elderly is an uneasy one. By the year 2030, the need for caregivers — paid and unpaid — will be even more acute: One in four people in the Roanoke and New River valley region will be over 65.

Nationwide, Alzheimer’s and other dementia-related diseases are predicted to swamp the health-care system. Meanwhile, government programs designed to help seniors stay in their homes are already in crisis mode, experts say, plagued by limited funding and worker shortages.

While family members still provide 80 percent of care for seniors, the historic safety net of extended family is increasingly tenuous.

Although Lucille "Big Mama" Blackwell cannot read or write, she said, her faith in God has helped guide her.

Connie Moorman, a social worker since 1993, has noticed a marked drop in the number of adult children who are actively involved in their parents’ care.

“We deal with a lot of families who don’t have a warm, fuzzy feeling toward their parents,” says Moorman, a senior worker for the Roanoke Department of Social Services. “It’s like they don’t want to be bothered. Or they’re out of state, and they’ll simply turn over everything to the nursing home, including the finances, and completely bow out of the picture.”

More and more, relatives of nursing home residents on Medicaid instruct Moorman: “Just contact me once a year for review — I’m not involved.”

As long-term care ombudsman for the LOA Area Agency on Aging, Pam McAdams regularly fields calls from seniors who have nobody in the world.

“The problem I run into is when all the neighbors have died,” McAdams says. “There’s this one individual who’s left, and they no longer have a ride to the grocery or beauty shop — and here they were, the very people who were giving rides to people before.”