As the Older Americans Act reaches middle age, the composition of seniors seeking job training under the law”™s Senior Community Service Employment Program appears to be changing as well, as more aging white men and immigrants turn to the program to generate added cash.
Authorized under Title V of the federal Older Americans Act of 1965, the Senior Community Service Employment Program (SCSEP) is open to job seekers age 55 and older who have family income at no more than 125 percent of the federal poverty level, or $17,500 a year for a household of two.
The program subsidizes informal apprenticeships at work sites, in hopes that the resulting work experience on computers and other systems will make seniors more competitive for regular jobs.
The negative stereotypes of older workers already run rampant ”“ slow to learn, slow to execute, quick to inflate premiums for health and workers”™ compensation insurance.Â
Those sentiments are counterbalanced by perceived upsides, however, such as strong work ethics and the ability to relate to clients.
In 2005, Fordham University”™s Ravazzin Center for Social Work Research in Aging studied the employment opportunities and constraints of older workers, in a paper dubbed “Economically Productive Aging in New York City.”
Author Nadia Cohen found that while workers age 55 and older can be served by “age neutral” employment agencies, in practice work-force-development programs have tended to regard older jobseekers as a marginal category, despite budget allocations built into some programs to address the need.
At the same time, Cohen found that the composition of seniors seeking assistance under Title V has changed dramatically in the past decade. Until the 1990s in New York, the program primarily helped widows who had worked only menial jobs.
Since the corporate downsizing of the late 1990s, however, a larger percentage of older men have sought assistance to transition to administrative jobs to pad retirement savings. The program has also caught the eye of an increased number of immigrants from Asia and Eastern Europe.
According to a report by the Employee Benefit Research Institute, 37 percent of retirees now report having to go back to work after retirement, up from 27 percent in 2006.
To date, the majority of organizations providing training under SCSEP have been government agencies and non-profit organizations. In Connecticut this year, however, the state”™s Department of Social Services (DSS) is stepping up trolling commercial job sites for employers willing to take on seniors for short-term apprenticeships, in hopes they will subsequently qualify for work that will deliver paychecks well into their “golden” years.
Local agencies supplement the Title V funds from a range of sources. For instance, in 2005, the Urban League of Westchester County in White Plains was among more than 100 organizations nationally to divvy up $51 million in funding from Senior Service America Inc. to augment SCSEP programs. In New York City, New Jersey and Connecticut, the disability-services organization Easter Seals sponsors SCSEP programs.
Westchester County won national recognition this year, after the American Society on Aging awarded Mount Vernon resident Mae Carpenter its 2008 ASA award for excellence in the field, recognizing her leadership of the Westchester County Department of Senior Programs and Services and her launch in 2006 of the New York Southern Area Aging Network. NYSAAN includes aging agencies and long-term-care centers from Westchester, Dutchess, Putnam, Rockland and Ulster counties, as well as New York City and Long Island.
