LeadingAge Maryland Awarded Nearly $350k to Support Older Marylanders in Affordable Senior Housing

LeadingAge Maryland was recently awarded nearly $350,000 in grants to improve the well-being of older Marylanders living in affordable senior housing. The three funders are the Thome Aging Well Grant Program, The Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation and the Stuhlman Foundation. LeadingAge will use the funds to implement a two-year project that will provide training and resources to frontline staff at 16 affordable senior housing communities in Baltimore City, Baltimore County, and Harford County.

“We are thrilled to have been awarded these funds,” notes LeadingAge Maryland president and CEO and senior project director, Allison Ciborowski. “Often, environmental services and property management staff interact with the residents in these communities more than anyone else, yet most have received very little to no specialized training in working with older people.”

The project will be led by LeadingAge Maryland in partnership with the LeadingAge LTSS Center @UMass Boston, as well as Catholic Charities Senior Communities, Comprehensive Housing Assistance Incorporated, The Community Builders, CSI Support and Development, and GEDCO, all LeadingAge member organizations. The project grew out of a collaboration led by LeadingAge Maryland and funded by The Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation – the Maryland Affordable Senior Housing Workgroup - which exists to help expand access to quality, affordable housing, services, and support for older Marylanders.

“Maintenance and property management staff in affordable senior housing really know the residents’ preferences and needs and are key to their successful aging in community,” says Robyn Stone, senior vice president for research at LeadingAge, and co-director of the LeadingAge LTSS Center @UMass Boston. “This first of a kind staff training in Maryland will provide the foundation for an educational program that can be shared with senior housing owners and operators across the country.”

The project, officially known as Scaling What Works: Connecting and Equipping Staff Teams Within Affordable Housing for Older Adults, will refine and evaluate a novel training program for environmental and property management staff. As a result, LeadingAge Maryland and its partners anticipate that older adults in these communities will experience a variety of improved outcomes related to service utilization, social connectedness, and physical well-being. The project will engage property managers and environmental services staff to train them on the special needs of older adults with the goal of preparing them for an enhanced role to support the well-being of residents in the communities where they work. These frontline staff will learn to work with on-site service coordinators who assist residents with addressing their social services and health needs to help optimize emotional well-being and physical and mental health. The premise of the proposed intervention is that these staff often have the most frequent contact with older adult residents and are, therefore, in the best position to intervene when help is needed.

"There is a deep need for continued support of organizations that serve the growing population of older adults who want to age in their homes and communities,” said Stephany De Scisciolo, vice president, Impact, Evaluation, and Population Health at Enterprise Community Partners. “For this round of grants, we built on our previous success and extended the grant opportunity to any organization providing home-based services, including those who help older adults modify their homes to make it easier for them to continue to age in place.”

Older adults and frontline staff members who live and work in the 16 communities will be part of an advisory team that informs both the design and deployment of the project. A formal evaluation and plan are included in the initiative, and based on the results, the project has the potential for broader dissemination throughout Maryland and the U.S.

About the Thome Aging Well Program

Funded by the Edward N. and Della L. Thome Memorial Foundation, Bank of America trustee, the program awarded $6 million in grants this year to scale aging-in-place initiatives with a track record of success by 22 nonprofits in Maryland and Michigan.

In total, the 2023 Thome Aging Well grants will provide essential support to over 6,000 older adults to help enhance well-being, reduce isolation and allow them to age with dignity in their homes. Best practices learned from the grantees will be shared across the field of affordable and public housing providers serving older adults.