An Approach To Identifying and Serving the Total Needs of Older Americans in the Community

An approach to identifying and serving the total needs of older Americans in the community is suggested based on a study of services for older people in Cleveland, Ohio. The three basic types of need criteria discussed in this approach are normative, felt, and prior receipt of service needs. The recommended approach involves: identification and definition of all services in the community directed toward the older American, selection of a random sample of the elderly to be interviewed, development of a set of questions for each service, collection of demographic data for each older American, identification of all agencies in the community providing each service, provision of each agency with a list of older Americans sampled, pretesting interview document, hire and train interviewers, conduct the interviews, and computerize data from interviews and agencies. Based on an analysis of the results, the above may be accomplished by: selecting one need criteria for each service, shortening the interview document to what is necessary, identifying characteristics of older Americans most associated with multiple needs, and determining why older Americans in normative need are not getting needed services.