Moving toward a senior-friendly future

Senior Matter
By Meg Callaway

  There’s a lot of buzz lately about making life better for seniors in Piscataquis County.
  While changes to the outside of Central Hall may be modest, the inside of this great historic building is undergoing dramatic changes. When you tour the site, you can see the footprint of the future home for an adult day services program, space for the Senior Network, and a nook carved out for a senior/disabilities services navigator.

Members of the Highlands group working to renovate and repurpose Central Hall as a senior center emphasize that the scope of the project is not limited to the building.
    Their vision is that the senior center will serve as an information and activity center that supports a wide range of senior-serving activities throughout the Piscataquis region.
    The Thriving in Place Across the Continuum of Care (TiP) project, funded by the Maine Health Access Foundation (MeHAF) and led by the Charlotte White Center, is wrapping up its planning phase and will propose an implementation plan to MeHAF in August that may provide $100,000/year in implementation funding for three years.
    There will be two public meetings held in Greenville and Dover on July 9 and 10 from 6-8 p.m. at which the results of the TiP community needs and resources assessment will be revealed.
    The Greenville meeting will be held on Wednesday, July 9, at the town office, and the Dover meeting will be held on Thursday, July 10 at the Piscataquis Regional YMCA.
    These stakeholder meetings will give Piscataquis citizens an opportunity to speak to the resources and activities they consider most critical to improving the network of services and supports that helps medically vulnerable people stay in their homes and communities. For more information, call Meg Callaway at (207) 270-2778 or check out the Feel Good Piscataquis! Facebook page.
    Center Theatre in Dover is leading yet another project to increase programming geared toward seniors.
    Executive Director Angela Bonacasa and board member/local entrepreneur Erin Cabot have been exploring ways to increase entertainment and social activities for older people and they recently joined forces with members of the Highlands and TiP projects.
    They will be surveying the interests of Piscataquis seniors in the coming weeks, and seniors interested in contributing their ideas may want to attend the July 9 and 10 stakeholder meetings in Greenville and Dover to share their thoughts about this opportunity as well as the TiP project.
    Research on aging reveals that mental stimulation derived from social interaction is critical to maintaining brain health as we get older. It is actually highlighted as one of the most effective ways to prevent or delay the onset of dementia.
    As one step toward increasing our collective brain health and enjoyment, the TiP project and Center Theatre will be re-screening “Golden Shorts,” five short films on aging produced for the Camden International Film Festival that were shown at the theatre back in May.
    For anyone particularly interested in Alzheimer’s disease, the theatre will also be showing “The Genius of Marian”, a longer film about one family’s journey through the course of the disease.
    The films will be free to the public and the dates and times will be announced soon.
    We invite readers to offer feedback about this column and to suggest topics for future articles. You may do so by contacting Meg Callaway of the Charlotte White Center at 947-1410 or meg.callaway@charlottewhite.org or Lesley Fernow at 992-6822 and lmfernow@rcn.com.