Join us for an engaging episode of "Caregiver Conversations" as Antonia Harbin-Lamb and Vincent Tilford, President and CEO of Hannan Center, delve into innovative strategies for enhancing the lives of older adults. Discover the impactful programs and community initiatives that make a difference in senior care.
Enhancing Senior Lives with Innovation and Care
Topics Discussed:
Introduction to Hannan Center [00:01:00]
Key Programs and Initiatives [00:05:00]
Daybreak Adult Daycare [00:10:00]
My Neighborhood Connections, AmeriCorps Program [00:15:00]
Centennial Celebration [00:20:00]
Contact Information:
Hannan Center
Neighborhood Legal Services Michigan
Senior Regional Collaborative
Welcome back to Caregiver Conversations, your guide to navigating the world of caregiving with insights and expertise. I'm Antonio Harbin Lamb, a staff attorney with the Elder Law and Advocacy Center, a division of Neighborhood Legal Services, Michigan. Today we're excited to delve into crucial topics impacting seniors in our community with our special guest, Vincent Tilford. Vincent is the President and CEO of Hannan Center, where he brings expertise in nonprofit leadership, housing, community development, and aging. Under his leadership, Hannan Center has expanded its services to include innovative programs like Daybreak, an adult daycare, and initiatives such as the 70 over 70 Awards, celebrating the remarkable achievements of older adults in Michigan. We're thrilled to have Vincent here to discuss how the Hannan Center is enhancing the lives of older adults through these impactful programs. Welcome to the show. Thanks, Antonia.
Vincent, for our listeners who may not be familiar, could you explain what Hannan Center is and its role in the community? Sure. And again, thanks, Antonia, for inviting me to talk to you about Hannan Center here. And I think many of your listeners probably know us best as Hannan House. But we've been known as Hannan House for probably about a quarter of a century. And when we operated under that name, we had an adult senior apartment building, which actually is where our offices are located today. So, we have the senior apartment building. People always thought that we had people living here, which we did for about 25 years. But what we have done for our entire history, and we will be 100 years old next year will celebrate our centennial, is that we've been providing supports and services to seniors to help preserve their dignity and enhance their quality of life and also helping them to age in place. We no longer offer housing to seniors, but we do help seniors to acquire housing if that's some of the services that they need. Wow, that's fascinating. Hannan Center truly plays a pivotal role in our community.
Vincent, can you elaborate on some of the key programs and initiatives Hannan Center offers, such as the 70 over 70 awards? Yes, sure. So you're right. We do offer a lot of services and programs that really help to address basic needs. So we're talking about food, clothing, shelter. And then we also help them to explore and develop their artistic talents. No, this is not just a hobby for some of our seniors who take our classes. They're very much interested in honing their craft. And some of our seniors go on to exhibit in our L & K Rod gallery as well as in other galleries around the city, and they even sell their art as well. But speaking about 70 over 70, I'm sure many people have heard of 40 under 40 where we celebrate up-and-coming young professionals. Well, 70 over 70 celebrates older people who are at least 70 years old and we want to highlight their ordinary accomplishments during this phase of their lives. And one of the reasons we wanted to do this is that our society often underestimates the worth of these older people. And we want to spotlight how they're making a difference in their community. Absolutely.
How do these awards celebrate and recognize exceptional older adults in Michigan? Can you share some examples of the categories and the impact of these awards on the community? I sure can. And first, I want your listeners to know that actually nominations for 70 over 70 are open now. They'll be open until the end of July. And we accept nominations across seven different categories, and we select 10 winners in each category. That's how we get the 70 over 70. And the categories that we select winners in are art. There's a change maker category, and this is one where people are sort of developing innovative solutions to known challenges in their communities. We have a Civic and Community Leadership Award, entrepreneurship, there's a lifelong learning category, and then there is an unsung heroes category. And I can highlight two past winners, like one, I can't remember his name, on someone who had been convicted of a crime, I believe it was murder. And he spent his time researching it and I think worked with the Innocence Project and was able to exonerate this guy. And so just absolutely amazing. He did this from a wheelchair. And I thought this was so important to highlight because people often want to warehouse older people when they see older people who may have physical challenges, they feel like they can't do anything that they're worthless. And this guy proved that, you know, you could really do more. And then the other category, other person I want to highlight, which I do remember his name, his name is Richard Phillips. And Richard Phillips, kind of like, you know, what happened in the other story I told you, except Richard Phillips was imprisoned for 46 years for two crimes that he did not commit. And again, the Innocence Project helped to get him exonerated. But while he was in prison, though, like the first 10 years of his life, I mean, he was just very, 10 years of being in prison, I should say. He was just really miserable because of, you know, he felt he was being treated unfairly. And he ended up sort of going back to one of his first loves, which was art. And he began to paint and hone his artwork, his artistic talents, and ended up being exonerated. And he has made some of the most wonderful paintings. I think he has a website, Richard Phillips, you put in with Richard Phillips artist and your browser, and it'll probably come up. But the reason why I want to highlight him is that he really is a testament to the resilience of older adults. You know, older people have experienced so many things, and we don't give them, you know, we don't recognize them for that. And resilience is what allows some older people to sort of sit back, look at the entire picture, and really come up with new solutions for problems that we're facing because they know that this two will pass. We just have to keep working at it. Wow, those are some really impactful stories. Thank you, Vincent. For those interested in learning more about 70 over 70 or nominating someone for the awards, where can they find out more information and how can they get involved? Well, we can go to our website at hannan .org, and there you can find 70 over 70. There is an application there. You can do the application online. You can see the seven categories that are available to nominate people in as a description for each category. And you can nominate as many people as you want. So the only requirement is that they have to be over the age of 70. And then as you think about the different categories that you might want to nominate them for, that you make certain that your brief sort of write -up sort of reflects some of those attributes that we're trying to celebrate in those different categories. And we're also looking for people to help volunteer on our committee. So you can certainly give us a call here at Hannan 833 -130 -3. You can ask for Rebecca Gillespie. She is our fund development and marketing director who is spearheading our 70 over 70 program this year. The actual 70 over 70 program will be at the Athenium in November. It's going to be November 9th. And I think it's from 11 to 1 at the Athenaeum in downtown Detroit. Okay. Thank you for that great information. Vincent, I understand Handen Center also hosts the Emerge Art Festival, an exciting event for older adults. Could you tell us more about the festival and what it means for the participants? Yeah, so the idea here was actually it came from one of our board members who was really enamored with the Grand Rapids art competition there. And, you know, there's so many stories, particularly about creatives, who really didn't do their best work until they were older. And so what this art festival seeks to do is to recognize those sort of budding talents, budding artists who are at least 55 years of age and older, and they have not made a living from their artwork or have not been able to make a living from their artwork. But what we're trying to do is to lift up the talents of older adult artists. One of the reasons why we focus so heavily on art at Hannan is that, you know, there was a longitudinal study that was done that show that when older adults engage in or have really robust arts education, that they have these wonderful health benefits and outcomes. They live longer. They have fewer medications that take. They, you know, visit the doctor's office less. And it's just a better sense of health and well -being that they report. And so with this art festival, we want to just certainly show that there are opportunities for older adults to continue to express themselves, to continue to grow. And we recognize three winners. We get a, it is a juries competition. And So those winners, the top three winners, they receive a monetary prize for their art. And then we have a People's Choice Award where people can go online and they can come here to Hannah. I think you can even see it online as well when the art exhibit is up. And they can vote on it as well. So that's really what we're trying to do is to kind of showcase the artistic talents of seniors. Okay. And when is the festival taking place? They changed it this year. And I said, I knew you were going to ask me that question. I said, let me look it up here real quick. Because it is going to be in August this year. Usually we have it in July. But this year, it is going to be on August 24th. And so applications, and we've actually had the applications open right now, and applications are all due by July 12th, by midnight of July 12th. And then we will notify all of the artists of their acceptance into the exhibit by July 18th, and then on August 24th is when we'll do an exhibit of all the artwork. We'll have all the, hopefully we'll have all the artists there, and then we'll make our announcement about the winners at that time. And I should also say, too, that this year's Emerge Art Festival, the theme is about reflects caregiving. So we're looking for artists to present works that reflect caregiving. And we're also going to do, we're partnering with another organization, kind of a solutions journalism program, where we're also going to honor sort of the next generation of artists. So these are artists who are age 54 and younger, but who are also caregivers or whose artwork is reflecting caregiving as well. Oh, wow, that's really interesting. I'm looking forward to seeing that or being a part of the festival. But shifting gears a bit, Vincent, can you elaborate on the services and activities offered by the daybreak adult daycare program at Hannan Center, specifically tailored for those living with dementia. Yeah, so we started daybreak right before the pandemic. We started it in January of 2020. And then we ended up closing in March of 2020, as everyone knows, that's sort of when the pandemic kind of just sort of, you know, shut down everything at that time. And then about a year later, we reopened and we tried to do it in a way to certainly keep everyone safe. But we felt it was important to reopen because we knew that there were people out there. And because of the sort of the isolation that we were all experiencing, it was really hard for a lot of caregivers who did not get a break. And they really needed a break. And if the caregiver doesn't get respite, they can't be their best for the person that they're caring for. And so we reopened, and it's just been doing very well. We offer a lot of services for both the person who has or is living with the dementia diagnosis, as well as we offer services for that care partner as well. So if the person is in our program, we offer meals. We have individualized and group cognitive enhancing activities. We have occupational therapy sessions with the participants. And again, I mentioned earlier about Hannah's focus on art. We do a lot of art programming in there. And so there is art and music therapy that's offered to the participants as well. And kind of going back to the caregivers, not only is it respite for them, but we have an awesome team in daybreak. And one of the things that they often do is provide that emotional support after hours and on the weekends to caregivers as well. We provide educational workshops to those caregivers, And we will even offer assistance when Hannan is no longer sort of an appropriate placement for the person that they had placed in our care. But we just, we just, first of all, I just think that the people that we have in daybreak do an absolutely outstanding job. And many of them have credentials around serving people who have a dementia diagnosis. Okay. How many care recipients can you take in daybreak? Is there a set number? Yes, there is. And so the actual number of people who are enrolled is not always reflected in the number of people that you see every day because not everybody comes eight hours a day, five days a week. And just sort of depends on what that care partner needs in terms of their respite as well. But we try to keep it no more than 20 people who have a dementia diagnosis in our program. And the reason for that is because, again, everyone has this dementia diagnosis. And so we want to make certain that we give them the right amount of attention. And then we also bring in, we have volunteers and will also bring in social workers and, I should say, graduate social work students as well as graduate occupational therapy students who are looking for field placements. And so what that allows us to do is to give much more attention to individual people than we might otherwise be able to do. Our facility is a secure facility, so what I mean by that is that you have to have a key fob to enter and exit our facility. We want to make certain that everyone is safe. And that's another reason for having the volunteers, the interns, in addition to our staff, when you have that low ratio of support, and we try to keep it where we have at least one, a staff, volunteer, intern to every three people there, it gives them the right amount of attention and we can keep them engaged and keep them safe. And from your perspective, what role do adult daycare programs like dayplay in enhancing the independence and quality of life for older adults in our community? For us, daybreak is another opportunity to help older people to age in place. So this may be if they're in the home of their loved one, maybe it's a spouse, maybe it's an adult child, but it helps them to stay in that particular environment. And there have been studies that have shown that when you have older people stay in these familiar environments, they do much better than they do when they go to more restrictive, you know, sometimes impersonal living situations. And so we try to help the care partner, you know, keep that their loved one in their home for as long as possible, for as long as they're able to as well. So, as I said, we are often counseling them and providing them emotional support. And as things change, then maybe it is time for them to begin to look at other placements, which we will help them with as well. But the other thing I would also say, too, about daybreak is that it fills a market in the long -term care services arena. Daybreak is very, very affordable. But for others who need longer -term placement or nursing homes or assisted living, those are some very expensive options. And if people can't afford that, that's great. What we want to do is to provide an option to care partners who may not have the resources to do that. Well, sounds like a wonderful place. Let's talk about the My Neighborhood Connections, AmeriCorps program. What role does this program play in supporting older adults in Southeast Michigan? Yeah, I'm so glad you asked about that. This is one of my favorite programs here at Hannan. We are an AmeriCorps site, and what we do is we recruit individuals. We usually have an intergenerational cohort, so we'll get older adults and younger adults who become AmeriCorps members. And the idea is that they will help those seniors that they encounter, and we often work through community partners who have seniors in their neighborhoods that need assistance in helping to age in place. And so what we do is to help those seniors through our AmeriCorps members. And then when our AmeriCorps members encounter situations that become a little bit more complex, that's when we bring in our social workers or we're bringing in our partners like Elder Law and Advocacy Center to really support those seniors there. So a quick example of sort of one way that we've really helped out seniors is one of the programs. We have two programs that we've worked on. One is we have created kind of a resource room where we have mostly non -perishable goods, but we have some perishable goods as well. These are products that you and I buy in the store every day that we just need for our everyday living. And we provide every senior $25 worth of goods every month, you know, who just comes by. Then we also work with seniors around Detroit's HOPE program, which will provide seniors if they own their home and they qualify, they can get anywhere between a 10 % to 100 % abatement of their property tax, and it's something that they have to do every year. But with many seniors on fixed incomes, this is really an important program because it allows them to keep more of their dollars in their pocket and to support other needs that they may have as well. That's impressive, Vincent. Could you share some more examples of how AmeriCorps members make a tangible difference in the lives of older adults they serve? Well, one way, we did this a lot during the pandemic and we still do this now many of the seniors that we serve live alone and we found out during the pandemic you know even though it was known well before the pandemic but you really saw it a lot during the pandemic how deadly and how harmful isolation has been for older people and so what we do is we make those connections you know And we don't push, you know, we just say, hey, we're here to help. And so if you want us to call you once or a week, twice a week, just let us know. And we will set this up on a schedule and we do these sort of wellness checks. Sometimes seniors just want to talk. I mean, I did these calls during the pandemic. And I got to tell you, I got people who were like, yep, thanks for checking in. You know, It was a two -minute call to those like, well, let me tell you what happened to me this time, right? And they go into, you know, a long conversation. But you know what they're really looking for is that connection. And we think that is so important for older adults. As I said, you know, when we first started talking, is that we tend to diminish older people and isolate them. We think that they no longer have value. And one of the things that the AmeriCorps members do is to help seniors stay connected, to encourage them to take some of our programs. We get a lot of seniors on our, we call it our telephone reassurance. They will also take some of our classes. We inform them about those classes. They can take classes. I mean, our classes are very affordable. It's like $7 a class. But the most important thing is that our seniors stay connected and they're no longer isolated. And so that's one of the things that I think is valuable from my neighborhood connections is this connections that they make for seniors to other people and to services. I love to hear about those wellness checks. There are so many great programs at Hannan. And I heard you mentioned that there is a centennial anniversary coming up. So I'd love for you to just expand on that. Do you have any activities that you know about that the celebration will encompass or anything you want to share about the centennial? Yeah. So, you know, we were started in 1925. So next year will be our centennial. We are planning to do kind of a big gala event. But I call it sort of our coming out party. Our coming out party, you know, at the start you asked me about Hannan and I told you what, you know, when people think about Hannan, they think about Hannan House. But we have evolved since we were a Hannan House. And so I kind of look at this as kind of our coming out party where we can talk about the journey that Hannan has taken over the last 100 years, the different programs supports that we provide, and how we are really here to serve older adults. You know, what people don't understand, or maybe we try not to forget, we try to forget because no one likes to talk about getting older, no one wants to get old, but you know what the alternative is if you don't get old, right? And so what we really want to do is through our 100th anniversary is start changing the narrative about how people think about older people. In the city of Detroit, right now we have more people over the age of 60 than we have under the age of 18. In the state of Michigan, in a couple more years, we're going to have a quarter of our population who are people over the age of 65. And so this is a huge part of our population, but if we don't engage them, if we continue to isolate them, if we don't recognize the contributions and values that they bring to their community, we are poor as a society because we have not engaged, you know, a significant chunk of our population. So one of the things that we want to do through our centennial celebration is to begin to change this narrative on aging and start to combat ageism, which, you know, as all isms are, you know, they are harmful. But people don't think ageism is harmful at all. You know, it's the only ism where everyone feels free. People have a much better quality of life, and they live longer on average from seven and a half to eight years. And so I'm hoping that we can really change that narrative through our centennial. Okay. Thank you, Vincent. That wraps up our conversation with Vincent Tilford, president and CEO of Hannan Center. Vincent, thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and your insights and the impactful work Hannan Center is doing to support older adults in our community. Vincent, it's been a pleasure learning about daybreak, the 70 over 70 awards, and the My Neighborhood Connections, AmeriCorps program. These initiatives are truly making a difference. For our listeners who want to learn more about Hannan Center, where can they find more information? So they can definitely go to our website at hannan .org if you also put in Hannan center if you're on social media and Facebook again you can get more information on our social on our Facebook site Hannan .org and then our phone number is 313833 1300 thank you and to our listeners thank you for tuning in to this episode of caregiver conversations where We celebrate being senior strong and where families falling apart come together. To stay updated on future episodes and access more resources for caregivers, be sure to subscribe to and download the podcast on your favorite platform. Keep the conversation going by connecting with us on social media. Until next time, take care, stay empowered, and keep caring.