NY State Grant Expands Access For Homebound Long Island Residents To Home Health Aide Service

LongIsland.com

State Transportation Grant Fuels Partners in Care and Visiting Nurse Service of New York Plans to provide more comprehensive in-home care in Nassau and Suffolk counties.

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Long Island, NY - October 2nd, 2013 - With a growing need for home health services in Nassau and Suffolk counties on Long Island, and with the help of a partnership with Long Island Congregations, Associations and Neighborhoods (LI-CAN), Partners in Care, an affiliate of the Visiting Nurse Service of New York, is expanding its operation through a unique transportation plan to help widen its service to the area’s elderly and disabled.

Partners in Care recently unveiled a new training and recruitment facility in Hicksville in an effort to increase the number of professionally trained and screened home health aides to service the island’s rapidly growing elderly and chronically ill population.

Through a close collaboration with LI-CAN, Partners in Care is now subsidizing bus and livery services home health aides typically use to reach their clients on Long Island, eliminating much of the financial and logistical problems faced by aides, allowing them to focus fully on the task at-hand: improving their client’s health and wellbeing.

“Long Island is a growing service area for our home health aides but providing affordable transportation has been a major obstacle,” said Marki Flannery, President of Partners in Care, an affiliate of Visiting Nurse Service of New York. “This grant will make it possible for more of Long Island's seniors to live well at home and age in place, and for other vulnerable populations to get the care they need.”

The arrangement was made possible through the Job Access Reverse Commute (JARC) grant, a $234,124 allocation from the New York Metropolitan Transit Council awarded jointly to Partners in Care and LI-CAN. The two-year grant commences this fall and covers all forms of transportation. The state funding is also augmented by additional partnerships with local taxi and car services, which have agreed to reimburse Partners in Care at a discount rate.

"The challenges of living far from family and the difficulty of hiring home health aides to provide care because of the lack of affordable transportation, makes aging on Long Island daunting.  This grant and access to an increased number of aides because of the new training and recruitment facility changes that picture,"  says Carol Blumenthal, Chair, Engaging with Aging, an initiative of LI-CAN.

Partners in Care has maintained a fruitful relationship with the residents of Nassau and Suffolk counties and its surrounding communities for years. The agency’s licensed, certified home health aides speak many different languages, including Spanish, Russian, Chinese and Korean. In addition, they are specially trained in treating patients who face a variety of medical conditions, including diabetes, multiple sclerosis, dementia, stroke, cancer, cardiovascular issues, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and more.

 

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ABOUT PARTNERS IN CARE
Partners in Care was established in 1983 as an affiliate of the Visiting Nurse Service of New York. At Partners in Care, whether a client needs short-term help or long-term care, we strive to provide the highest quality home health aide services and private-duty nursing. We believe that home care should help clients maintain their independence and dignity and that our caregivers should be carefully matched to fit with each client’s medical needs, personality and interests.

ABOUT LI-CAN
Long Island Congregations, Associations and Neighborhoods (LI-CAN) is a multi-faith, multi-racial, non-partisan citizens’ power organization made up of dues-paying religious and non-religious institutions throughout Nassau and Suffolk counties. LI-CAN is committed to training and developing leaders, to addressing community issues, and to holding public and corporate officials accountable on Long Island. Our dues-paying member institutions represent more than 35,000 families in Nassau and Suffolk Counties, and reflect our region’s theological, racial, geographic and economic diversity.