Council of Ageing launches ‘Directory of Services’

The Council of Ageing is observing its sixteenth anniversary. They are celebrating this milestone under theme of “Celebrating Partnerships”. On Thursday they met at the Biltmore Plaza to make plans for some big undertaking. They want to form a national coordinating committee that will help to strengthen their network of ageing originations across the country. When we spoke with Executive Director Ixchel Poot, she told us how a launch of directory of services will help them to improve access to service.

Ixchel Poot, Executive Director, National Council of Ageing

Ixchel Poot

“We are looking at the possibility of forming a national coordinating committee for ageing. That is looking at the broad ageing sector; so we are talking about caregivers; residential facilities; health care providers; regular local community groups that do meals and wheels and visits to shut-ins.  How do all these organizations feed into how we as a nation are addressing ageing issues. So, today our partners are highlighting the services they provide, but also looking at gaps and challenges they are facing so that as a sector we can look at how e can address that holistically. In 2016, we started a process of sending out organizational informational forms to update information that we had at the Council of Ageing. And as these forms were being updated, we realized that there were services that have been added, services that have been discontinued; new agencies had come on board. There was a lack of information for the public in general and even among agencies themselves. So, we started to compiling, revising, verifying; so today we are launching the directory of services. So, it is very small, very simple but very direct.  So, it is intended to help persons in the wider community but also our service providers to know where they can send their clientele for additional services.”