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on Aging to foster the development of comprehensive, coordinated service delivery systems to meet the needs of older persons within designated

areas of the State.

The Area Agencies are charged with becoming a focal point on aging for their geographic portion of the State; a group of counties, a single county, or a city. This involves difficult and diverse roles:

Development of the annual area plan, for movement
toward a comprehensive, coordinated service delivery
system to meet the needs of older persons in the area;

gaps

in

Funding service provider agencies to fill
priority service areas such as information and referral,
legal and other counseling, transportation, home serv-
ices and home repair, providing training and technical
assistance to such agencies and monitoring their pec-

formance;

Persuading other public and private agencies at the area,
county, city, and neighborhood level to make greater
resource commitments to services for older persons, to
make policy changes to better-serve older people, and to
coordinate with the Area Agency and other service providers
so that services for older persons become more compre-
hensive, more coordinated and more oriented to the special

Advocating for provisions to meet needs of older persons

on such issues as tax relief, special housing, medical

and mental-health services, and public transportation,

to county and city government, Councils of Governments and
Economic Development Districts.

The planning role, plus the managerial and program development role with regard to service delivery development with AoA funds could take up all of the time of Area Agencies. The advocacy role is challenging because of the wide range of specialized issues to be dealt with. Persuading other agencies to change policies, change their funding patterns, and to give up some degree of autonomy in order to improve the coordination of services delivery to older persons is perhaps the most difficult role of all, for the Area Agency, which has a limited number of tools available. Since amounts of money larger than those

provided under the Older Americans Act flow through other systems

which could benefit older persons more than they do, this latter role

is of critical importance.

The information I will be sharing with you for the remainder of this

testimony was obtained primarily from two major studies.

The first study was sponsored by AoA through a grant
to the Andrus Gerontology Center, University of
Southern California. The Project Director was

Dr. Steinberg. This study covered 97 Area Agencies
located in the Western United States in DHEW Regions
VI, VIII, IX, and X and was completed in November of
1975.

The second study is sponsored by AoA through contract
with Westat, Inc., of Rockville, Maryland. Mr. Dietz
is the Project Director. This is a multi-year study
of two samples of Area Agencies. During the first
phase of this longitudinal study, data has been
collected covering the period from mid 1974 through
August of 1976 from a national probability sample of
of 39 Area Agencies, over 1,200 service providers,
37 advisory councils, 19 umbrella agencies in which
Area Agencies are located, 27 State Agencies and 425

influential individuals.

The time period of these studies is an important context for the findings of these studies. The amendments were enacted in May 3, 1973. Funds first became available in Fiscal Year 1974.

Most of

FY 1974 was taken up by the dividing of the States into planning and

service area, development of the first area plans on aging, and

approval of this first plan for full operation. Mid 1974 represents

a beginning point for most Area Agencies. Therefore, both

studies cover Area Agencies during a period of early development.

Another important context is that we plan to follow the development of Area Agencies over time. We will begin a study of the second sample as soon as we have completed analyzing the extensive data in

this first report.

I have discussed the aims and goals against which the program was evaluated. Now let me begin to describe the findings.

Organizational Locations

We found that Area Agencies are located in a variety of organizational settings. More than 2/3 are public, while the other 1/3 are private, non-profit.

For instance 38%

are in Regional groups such as Councils of Government or Regional Planning Commissions, 1/4 are part of County Government and a few are part of City Governments

(1%).

About 1/4 are independent groups incorporated as Area
Agencies. The rest are Community Action Agencies, service

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providers or atypical kinds of public agencies.

Length of Time Agency Structure Existed Prior to Area Agency

Designation

The Westat Study found that 64% of the Area Agencies were

new organizations which had been in existence for less than a

year.

Staffing and Funding

Area Agencies are generally small agencies with limited staffs and

resources.

Generally, the Directors of Area Agencies had experience in administration of social services, community organizing, planning, and/or providing direct services before becoming Directors.

The median area agency has, in addition to the Director, the equivalent of about 4 full time employees, excluding staff involved in providing direct services. In fact, 11% reported having no professional staff other than Director. On the other hand one agency reported 60 professional staff.

Area Agencies receive funds from many sources and are funded only