Here at The Center for Community Solutions we love analyzing data and especially love it when the data is about an issue near and dear to our hearts. Please enjoy the following expressions of love to some of our favorite consulting projects related to older adults.
A Love Letter
My dearest Age Friendly Cleveland,
Do you remember the early days? When we were first learning about each other – you with your eight domains, me so eager to write the survey questions that would move our relationship forward? It truly was love at first proposal. As our romance blossomed, we revised, refined and perfected those questions so that we were able to grow our love with more than 1,000 older adult residents of the City of Cleveland. I can think of no better way to celebrate our joint passion for older adults than by reviewing and analyzing the responses of more than 240 Clevelanders so eager to be a part of this magical thing we call Age Friendly Cleveland.
I’ll never forget putting the finishing touches on the 160-page proclamation of our love – The Age Friendly Cleveland Assessment.
But that was not the end – no, our deep connection continued to grow as we dreamed the dream of implementation. Through all the meetings, summits, prioritizations, processes – we never lost sight of our enduring vision to enhance the well-being of older adults through creating an Age Friendly Action Plan.
My sweet, sweet Age Friendly Cleveland, you will always have a special place in our hearts.
Love,
The Center for Community Solutions’ Research Team
A Love Poem: Profiles, lovely profiles
Data is visualized
That is love
Age, race/ethnicity, income, educational attainment
Need we say more
Yes we will
Elder abuse, hunger, opioid use, housing, caregiving
All the things
About you
And your older adults
In one beautiful
Place
Roses are red, violets are blue, here are some love poems we wrote just for you! Click To Tweet
A Fairy Tale: All we need is love (and a community needs assessment)
Once upon a time, in a not so far off land called “Uniontown” the good people of Direction Home Area Agency on Aging set out to be the best they could be to the people they love the most. With a long, storied history of providing for the needs of older adults and adults with disabilities in the land of Summit County and beyond, the good people of Direction Home wanted to know more about those they serve.
‘What,’ they said, ‘do our people need?’
‘How,’ they said, ‘can we better provide for their needs?’ ‘I wonder,’ they said, ‘will our people need long-term care,’ and ‘how,’ they said, ‘will they pay for it?’ For these are the people we love and all we need is love, and maybe a community needs assessment. And so the good people of Direction Home sought out the hard working data nerds over yonder at The Center for Community Solutions. The two teams worked long and hard to develop both phone and mail surveys. ‘But what about the caregivers?’ they said. And so, they gathered the caregivers and listened to their stories, heard their frustrations and recorded their needs and desires. And then the hard-working data nerds took all the survey data, all the word data and crunched long-term care numbers to be able to present the good people of Direction Home with the finest gift in all the land: The Summit County Older Adults Needs Assessment.
And all was well in the land.