Host John Petrella interviewed Director of Elder Affairs Pam Kelly regarding the programs, funding, and support services available to Medford seniors. Kelly provided details on membership, volunteer opportunities, transportation, and health insurance counseling offered through the Senior Center.
[John Petrella]: Hello everyone and welcome to Method Happenings, a show for and about the city of Medford, and I am John Petrella. And the purpose of this program is to give Method citizens facts and information to help you make informed choices and to discover city services or businesses you may not have been aware of. And our guest today is Pamela Kelly, who is the Director of Elder Affairs for the City of Medford. Welcome, Pamela. We are honored that you came to visit us.
[Pam Kelly]: Thank you, John. I'm very happy to be here. Go ahead. I'm sorry. That's OK. I'm excited because getting the word out is very important for all of our participants and the demographic in Medford.
[John Petrella]: And we plan on doing that with today's show. We're just very happy you came. We always start off, just a little bit about yourself, tell our audience, you know, who is Pam Kelly?
[Pam Kelly]: Okay. Well, my name is Pam Kelly, and I do live in Malden. Don't hold that against me.
[Pam Kelly]: We won't. I am the Director of Senior Center and the Council on Aging here in Medford and I've been there for 18 years. I enjoy, I'm very passionate about what I do there and creating all the programs for the seniors, the older community in Medford. We're all aging every single day and we need to make sure that we have things for every person that are 60 years of age or older.
[John Petrella]: so okay so it's 60 years of age or older that is correct you can be 60 so yes i qualify now too yeah no i always thought it was 65 and older so it's 60 that's good to know it is very good to know it is okay uh so you know naturally The next question is, what brought you? I mean, how did you get interested? What brought you to the Council on Aging?
[Pam Kelly]: Senior Center. Funny story, but not. Actually, my first career was in the travel industry. I was a travel agent for 20 years at a local agency. local travel agency in downtown Melrose and I really enjoyed it but then unfortunately 9-11 happened and the travel industry changed quite a bit. I worked with older people at the travel agency where they all enjoyed group travel to Europe and my even my staff within the agency was older. So I felt comfortable working with the older group. After 2001 and the 9-11, I seen the writing on the wall, travel industry was going down. One day I was reading the newspaper, it existed back then actually, Yeah, it did. And there was a small ad for a person to be an office manager clerk and would be good with older adults and also new travel. And I said, boy, that hits me right off the top. You know, bingo. That's what I want to do. So I sent my resume in. And a couple of months later, I did hear back from the city saying, please come in for an interview. I was hired and started off as the office manager for the senior center, where I worked for five years. And then the previous director did retire. And at that point, I put my name in for the job position as director and have been there ever since.
[John Petrella]: And you've done a great job ever since. I want to point that out. Thank you. It really is. It's quite amazing what goes on there. We do a lot very interesting how you get in there and through that, you know, so that that's that's I mean, I guess working, yeah, you're working with seniors, travel, and they do do a lot of traveling, you do a lot of things up there with trips and stuff.
[Pam Kelly]: Yes, we do a lot of day trips, overnight trips, and we try to keep people active. We ask them, what do you want to do? Where do you want to go? Because everybody wants to do something different, right? Oh yeah, of course. So we try to encompass as many things as possible.
[John Petrella]: Okay, so, How does someone become, I'm gonna use the word involved, or how do you, I don't even know what it is. Do you join the senior center? What is the process? I have no idea, like, do you just go in and you sign something, you join, what is it?
[Pam Kelly]: John, this is a great question because so many people in all the years that I've been there will say either, I'm not going down there, that's for old people, or I didn't know you existed. What do you offer there? So we tell people, first, take a look at our newsletter. See if there's things that you want to do. Or come down for a tour. We have an open house every September for one week, where we offer people to come in, try a class or a program or a lunch for free, and just see all the different dynamics that are going on in that building. We average, right now, about 200 people a day coming in and out of the building for programs.
[John Petrella]: And that's quite a bit. I have been in there on a few occasions, and every time I go in there, I'm like, there's a class going on over here with chair exercise. There's a bunch of people over here getting ready to go on a bus. It's like there's so much activity. Always. It's really a lot. being impressed by the number of events, classes, trips. You guys do trips to just about everywhere. It's all made available to our seniors. I'm sure it's for their enjoyment.
So my question is, and I'm amazed, I really am. I see the bulletin, and we're gonna talk about that in a little bit. How does it all get done? I mean, who staffs it? Do you have?
[Pam Kelly]: First, I would like to give credit to my staff and all the volunteers. So currently on my staff, there's actually only four paid staff that I have. That's it.
[Unidentified]: That's incredible.
[Pam Kelly]: So it's myself, my office manager that are full time. I have a social worker who is part time and I have an outreach volunteer coordinator who is part time. Our building maintenance person is now under the facilities department. He works at our senior center all day, every day, but he's now managed and paid through the facilities department budget, which is fine. Mark is our, he cleans the building, he moves tables and chairs.
[John Petrella]: Is that like the Department of Public Works?
[Pam Kelly]: No, the Facilities Department actually handles all the public buildings, so he comes under their regime now. But I definitely want to give our volunteers a big shout out and thank you as well, because without them, we, the staff, wouldn't be able to continue with everything that we do. We have people that man the front reception desk, the office phone, we have people that come in and help out in the lunchroom, people that help at the parties, people that help with trips and tours to escort the trips, people that will also volunteer to do classes. We have people that volunteer to teach Spanish, Chinese English, Tech Time. There's so many different opportunities.
[John Petrella]: So, you know, I see a lot of, the day I come up to visit, I saw there was like exercise classes going on. Is that a normal, is that an activity like, I guess what I'm asking is like, anyone can go sign up for that? Sure.
[Pam Kelly]: So, one of the first things when you do come in, and we ask you to fill out a participant form, The participant form is just to get your demographics because we do get funding through the city, the state, and a little bit through the federal government. And they want to know how many people we're serving. So we take those demographics, they go into a computer. You become a number at that point. And we're able to run reports off of a program called My Senior Center that collects that information so that when we want to write grants, or we want to prove to the state how many people we're seeing in our building, we can just simply run that report and get that information thrown back at us so that we can then submit it to the city, the state, and the federal government.
[John Petrella]: Okay. So, I'm going to ask this. Everyone, I mean, you know, you said, like, you live in Malden. Yeah. If I live, I mean, how does it work? You have to be a Medford citizen to
[Pam Kelly]: So we actually, because we get state funding.
[John Petrella]: Yeah, that's when you said that. Right.
[Pam Kelly]: When we get state funding, we actually have open door policy, which means most of our programs can be accessible to people outside of Medford as well. And we do have people that will follow, for example, our exercise classes, the instructors, to go from city to city and take a particular class that they enjoy doing. There are some things that we do that are extremely important that they're only Medford residents. You know, we have a handyman program, for example, and the handyman program is through our CDBG grant and he can only do Medford residents to keep them in their home safely and comfortably. So his funding comes out of that, so he only stays in the city of Medford to help them. There's also other funding for our social worker, again, through the city and the federal government that she's only in, Medford has such a large older population, she couldn't do anybody from other cities. Because we have 12,744 people that are 60 years of age and older.
[John Petrella]: Really?
[Pam Kelly]: In Medford? Yes. Wow. That is based on the 2020 federal census. And the reason I know that number so well, is because it's part of our grant, our state funding.
[John Petrella]: Okay, so that's how you actually get money with those numbers. Correct. Now, I'm just gonna, for a city our size, that seems high. Is that a high number?
[Pam Kelly]: It is actually high, and I'm grateful for that high number because the more people we have that are 60 and older, the more funding we get. We get that rate for 10 years.
[John Petrella]: Okay.
[Pam Kelly]: And that actually increased from the 2010 federal census.
[John Petrella]: So it seems like, and I know a lot of senior citizens, I mean, but I know a lot of people have moved out, but it seems like that's a good number. So a lot of people want to stay here. They really do. Absolutely, they do. It's a great city. It is, yeah, and they want to stay here. That's a good thing. All right, so now, our place, our time, is your monthly newsletter. I look at it, it's like 10 pages long, sometimes long, it's packed with everything going on at the senior center. I mean, it is quite a newsletter, newspaper, whatever you wanna call it. I gotta ask, I mean, I'm like, amazed at it, how is it put together, distributed, printed, where is it available? I mean, no, it's incredible.
[Pam Kelly]: It really is. Thank you. Well, again, because we're always looking to update and change what we're doing for programs, it's important that we advertise those changes as well in the newsletter.
[John Petrella]: Okay.
[Pam Kelly]: Myself and my staff work on the newsletter every month. And again, it is 10 pages of information. There are two pages of ads. Thankfully, I don't have to go out and get those ads.
[John Petrella]: But that's a good thing, right? It is. It helps, yeah.
[Pam Kelly]: It is, because LPI is our printing company.
[Unidentified]: Okay.
[Pam Kelly]: So the 14th of each month, my next month's bulletin has to be sent to them.
[Unidentified]: Okay.
[Pam Kelly]: They print 4,000 paper newsletters every month.
[John Petrella]: Four thousand.
[Pam Kelly]: Four thousand. And out of that four thousand we distribute to approximately one hundred different Medford locations throughout the city. The library, the stop and shop, some of the smaller Dunkin Donuts and coffee shops and people, where people live in the housing units, in the condominium units. so that they're accessible. Of course, we have them at City Hall, the Senior Center, and all of the senior housing units themselves, so that as many people can get them, we get them out. We also mail to a small subscription of nearly 75 people, because a lot of people now are getting the newsletter emailed.
[Unidentified]: Okay.
[Pam Kelly]: So we're getting that generation of people who like to see it on the computer and can adjust and read it on the computer.
[Unidentified]: I never knew that.
[Pam Kelly]: Yes. So I could sign up and have it emailed? You can have it emailed to you every month. Absolutely. That's interesting. You can also find it on the city's website, on our department, Medford Council on Aging department. There's a link that you can go right on to that. And the city will also have it on their site. So there's many different areas that you can find the newsletter. And then of course, just stop by the senior center and pick one up.
[John Petrella]: Pick one up, yeah. There's a few convenience stores that also have it, because I have coffee Saturday morning at a particular place, Alexander's, we'll put a plug in for them. And they have it there, and I do pick it up there, so.
[Pam Kelly]: Right, like I said, there's nearly 100 different locations, and if you belong to a store, restaurant, or something that you would want it, you can always call the senior center and ask for us to deliver it. We have four different, volunteers who deliver to their areas. We have north, south, east, and west. Oh, so you've got it covered. We do. We have it covered and we have volunteers that will deliver them for us at the end of each month. So whether it's the library getting 250 of them or your small Alexander's maybe getting 25 to 50. Yeah, yeah. We accommodate every business and everybody that would like one.
[John Petrella]: All right. Now I'm gonna I'm going to ask you to do this. There's so much in there. The way it's broken down, can you just give us a brief overview of the actual newsletter? Sure. I mean, what's in it? Put it that way, page by page. I don't want to tie you up for an hour, but I'm just... Okay.
[Pam Kelly]: Well, we'll quickly go through how we set it up right now. Okay.
[Unidentified]: Thank you.
[Pam Kelly]: All right. So the front page is always going to be our best things going on. So we like to do a different themed party pretty much every month. So of course, October newsletter has our Halloween party. And it talks about what's involved, who our donors are, how much the ticket will cost, our entertainment, what you're going to eat, and if we have a local cultural council grant that's helping us pay for that event, or local sponsors. So, that was going to be one of the big things. We had the flu clinic early October, so we want to make sure as many people see that. So, our most important things that we want to get the word out are on the front page. You open up and inside the first column, we're going to have our social worker, Niki. Niki always puts in some information about what's happening.
the Medicare, Medicaid, World Mental Health Day was the October one she talked about. But she changes her topic every month to keep people informed of who she is and what she does as well. And then we go on to, for example, our legal seminars, our ongoing programs, our Spanish class. We had the city offering their energy bill checkup with National Grid and ABCD. We're going to be offering Mahjong, coming soon. Then you switch over to the next page and we'll keep all our trips and getaways together on one page. This way people know, they always look at the same area. They know where to find what's going on. We're doing some special one-offs as I call them. The true life story of In the Whale.
[John Petrella]: Okay, that's the new movie. There's a book.
[Pam Kelly]: It's actually, no, this is the true story of the gentleman that was down the cape. Okay. That got swallowed by the wind.
[Unidentified]: Got actually swallowed, yeah.
[Pam Kelly]: But there's actually a movie right now that just came out. Yes. It's not the same one.
[Unidentified]: Not the same. No. Okay.
[Pam Kelly]: So this one's more local and it's an 80 minute viewing of the film. Oh. And then the director's going to be there. Very nice. And he's gonna give about a 30 to 45 minute talk afterwards.
[John Petrella]: Yeah.
[Pam Kelly]: So we try to do these different things to have people enjoy local things going on in the area. We do a lot of programs with health information, with Mystic Valley Aging Services. Our center calendar, of course, is really important for everybody, because it'll give you your day-by-day breakdown of what's happening each and every day, and your lunch options, because we do serve lunch every day at 12 noon.
[John Petrella]: Every day?
[Pam Kelly]: unless we're having a themed party. So your choice of lunch is always here. And now, this is something new, the senior center is offering vegetarian meals. We're finding out more and more people are interested in healthier options. And then, of course, this next page is all our activities. So our exercise classes, our breakdown of what class is on what day and how much it may charge. There's a small fee so that the instructors can get paid, and what day and time they are, and if there's any cancellations, if somebody's on vacation, or things like that.
and information and resource page. We have many support groups. For example, we offer a veteran's coffee hour once a month, the low vision support group, a grief support group, the handyman program. Um, we've offered the LGBT LGBTQ plus programs We have Paul Donato that comes in once a month and offer Support if needed and of course we have some legal services for extra support the back page I usually leave for other city type things that seniors need to know about. For example, the senior parking permit renewals.
Sometimes I want them to know about it and getting it into the newsletter is gonna be the best way for them to see it.
[John Petrella]: Someone asked me about this, the parking up there. No, no, no, listen, I'm not trying to be but, I know they say it can be difficult and a lot of people do go there and sometimes I mean, do they park in that, you know the parking lot right before? That's okay to park there.
[Pam Kelly]: I know what you have to pay. Correct. So there's a couple of options with that. So if you're a Medford senior resident, you can purchase that parking permit for the entire city for a year for $25. We try to advise people to do that. That will allow you to park in that parking lot in this center area for $25 for the year. For a whole year, that's great. And you're allowed to park in there for up to three hours.
[Unidentified]: Okay, that's awesome.
[Pam Kelly]: That's a great option. For people that don't buy the parking permit from the city, or not from Medford and can't get that, we have along the black fence line, I believe it's 18 parking spots, and we have special senior center decals that have to go on your car. Those are free. But you have to be a member, a participant, because we just can't give them out to anybody. And you're allowed to park along the fence line for free. If there's no spots, and you have to park in the middle area, then you'd have to pay. And it's $1 an hour. So sometimes we have big events, and there's not enough parking.
[John Petrella]: A dollar an hour, that's.
[Pam Kelly]: It's not bad.
[John Petrella]: No, that's really good. That's real good. So yeah, because a lot of people, someone asked me to bring that up because they do go there a lot and sometimes no problems. Other times, I guess, depending on what's going on.
[Pam Kelly]: Correct.
[John Petrella]: It can get difficult. Correct.
[Pam Kelly]: I mean, if you look in the calendar and you see that there's, you know, seven or eight different things going on in one day, you know that parking might be a little bit more difficult. The other option, of course, is this free transportation with a company called Megan. Megan Transportation offers free senior center pick up and drop off from your home to the senior center Monday through Friday. And you have the option on the return to be picked up at either one o'clock in the afternoon or three o'clock in the afternoon. So that's a nice option. And we try to tell people, especially in the winter time, you don't wanna have to shovel out your car. Use Megan, they'll pick you up at your front door and drop you off at our front door.
[John Petrella]: And I'm sure a lot of people don't know that you can do that. So that's a great option.
[Pam Kelly]: Yeah, and they have ability, so if somebody's unable to do their stairs, they have wheelchair lifts. So that people can still get on and off their van.
[John Petrella]: Okay, so you had mentioned, I just wanna go over this quickly now, about volunteers. Not that I wanna go over it quickly, I shouldn't have said that.
[Pam Kelly]: That's okay.
[John Petrella]: Because I'm curious. How does one volunteer? Can you give us an idea of what they can volunteer for? Hours, any requirements?
[Pam Kelly]: Well, we do do a CORI check on everyone. Of course, yeah. Okay, anybody 18 years of age or older needs to be CORI checked. Our volunteer outreach coordinator is Grace Albert. Grace works 25 hours a week and one of her goals is to always connect with people, no matter what their age is. We do a lot with the younger generation, the high school kids, Tufts University students, all the way up to people that are retired. We get them in and she'll interview you and ask you, what is your history? What have you done in the past? And what do you want to do? If you like to drive, for example, maybe we could use you as one of the newsletter delivery people. If you are a person who likes to do office work or data entry, we can put you in the office and help us out there. If you're a very friendly person, we can put you at the reception desk and greet people as they come in and check them in on the computer screen. answer the phones, assist in the lunchroom with lunches, at parties. There's so many different things and that's one of the great things about Grace is she will talk with you and figure out how often do you want to volunteer? Do you want to volunteer once a week, once a month? We have people that volunteer maybe just three or four times a year and that's okay. And that's fine. That's perfectly fine. Anything you want to do is going to help us in the long run. And so it's really important that we have that outreach volunteer coordinator, because again, without all those people, and currently we have 106 volunteers on our list. So that's great.
[John Petrella]: I didn't realize you had that many. Yes, we do. And I'm sure they all get put to good use.
[Pam Kelly]: Absolutely. Each and every one of them.
[John Petrella]: Yeah, that's interesting.
[Pam Kelly]: We find their skill set and then we utilize that to our ability.
[John Petrella]: Interesting, okay. I'm gonna get back to one thing and then we'll get on to the last question. I wanna, I don't know what you call it, I wanna become a member, I wanna come, I wanna have lunch a couple of times a week. So I just come on in.
[Pam Kelly]: fill out the participant form, then we're going to give you like a little card, like a CVS card, and it has a barcode on it. So anytime you come into the building, you're going to scan it, and the receptionist will say, hello, and what are you here to do today? And then she presses on our computer screen those objects that you're going to do. So we have a tracking of who you are. Who's in our building.
[John Petrella]: Nice to know who's in there.
[Pam Kelly]: Who's in our building. Of course. And how often you've been coming.
[John Petrella]: So it's that simple. It is that simple. So I want our audience to know it is that simple. Yes. It's very easy.
[Pam Kelly]: There's no fee. It's free to come in and join.
[John Petrella]: Whoa, whoa, whoa, free?
[Pam Kelly]: It's free to come and join. And join. Yes, there's no fee to join.
[John Petrella]: So, all right, so I join and I do look and I see these trips sometimes. But then I see the price of the trip and I'm like, wow, how do they do it? Some of the trips are really good. I know a couple of guys actually went on one of the trips. They went to, I don't know if it was a music theater.
[Pam Kelly]: The North Shore Music Theater.
[John Petrella]: The North Shore Music Theater. Had a great time. And I guess it was less than what They went, they got there. If they had to do everything on their own, it would have been much more.
[Pam Kelly]: And again, because of my background in the travel industry, I know when I contact these different companies, I ask for group rates, first off. Group senior discounted rates. And anything that you can do to make it as low as possible. And that's what we do. We try to discount it. Because we're not there to make money off of you. We want everybody to be able to attend these trips and events so that they can have a good time.
[John Petrella]: Yeah, you have a lot of good trips. Thank you. A lot of good events. Prices are great. That's all I'm going to say. They're fantastic. Thank you.
[Pam Kelly]: And we take recommendations. So if somebody wanted to do something that we're not doing or go someplace, we always are looking for people to recommend things to us.
[John Petrella]: It's good to know. Good to know. All right, so the final question, you know, you guys offer so much up there, it really is, I've learned a lot, I'm sure our audience is going to learn a lot, but are there programs, do you offer programs You know, I know a lot of seniors, they're always looking for information on like maybe housing, some financial assistance, especially like Medicare and all the health stuff, you know, who wants to switch their plan.
You know, do you offer anything? I mean, do you?
[Pam Kelly]: Yes. Actually, our social worker, Niki Gregory Elwell, is the person that they would want to contact at the senior center for any of those housing, financial, Medicare, and any health-related issues. Currently, she's working, it's called, she's a SHINE Councilor. SHINE stands for Serving Health Information Needs for Everyone. And every year from October 15th through December 7th, it's called the open enrollment. An open enrollment is an important time of year for people that need to make changes because maybe their medication has changed or their doctors have changed. And they don't make it easy for the older adult to be able to... I can attest to that. ...figure out what is going to be best for them. It's getting more and more complicated. Correct. It is difficult. Correct. So because Nikki is a SHINE Councilor, she's able to have one-on-one appointments with you, and she tells you what to bring into that appointment. you sit down and talk with her and she puts it into the computer and she is able to tell you well if you take this it may be ten dollars cheaper however you're not going to have the doctor you wanted or guess what we're going to be able to save you money and keep you in the in network of the hospital and doctor that you want so she gives you those options so you know up front in a very basic English explanation because sometimes it's too difficult to understand what they're trying to sell you.
[John Petrella]: No, it's very difficult. It is. It just seems, you know, I don't know if it's the insurance companies, but it just seems to get more and more and more complicated.
[Pam Kelly]: And it changes every year. So people that might be comfortable with their program that they're offered right now, it may change. And once the open enrollment changes, you may be stuck in that for another year. So it's worth looking into, and making changes, and making an appointment with Niki, or if you're involved with Mystic Valley Aging Services, with one of their shine Councilors.
[John Petrella]: If you didn't belong to the senior center.
[Pam Kelly]: You can still call. Still call. Absolutely. That's how we're gonna get you involved. But that's what I'm saying.
[John Petrella]: So once they're in there, you're like here, sign up, fill out this form and you're all set. Because I think that is very important because I have never had so many seniors or people, I'm a senior too. I'm learning more and more, but it is getting more and more complicated. Even just a few years back, it wasn't, you could go through it and decide on your own, but now it's like, whoa.
[Pam Kelly]: And even the housing issues are important. So we try to inform our participants and clientele that Don't wait until there's a crisis. Learn about your options in advance. So if you're thinking about maybe five to 10 years downsizing, selling your home here in Medford, Don't wait too long to fill out those applications to get into housing, because housing does have a wait list. And Nikki can sit down and talk with you about the different options, because it's not really just one form that has to be filled out. There's some private housing units, senior housing, and then there's different applications. So those are really important topics, but we tell people don't wait for a crisis. Get your work and your information up front.
Well, two of the buildings, yes. We have 121 Riverside that just went through a major renovation, which is beautiful. They did take us on a tour inside to see the apartments. They're beautiful, very well-maintained. they well thought out too when they redid everything. And then across the driveway is 99 Riverside, which is another great location. But there's many others as well. You know, you have, they're going to be doing Wackling Court over. You have Temponi Manor, you have Weldon, you know, there's a lot of options.
But you want to know your options and get on the list because.
[John Petrella]: That's the key.
[Pam Kelly]: Right. Again, many people are aging every single day.
[John Petrella]: Oh, I know. And housing is becoming more and more important. Yeah, that's for sure. It really is. You know, I can go on. But it's time. I've kept you here long enough. But it's that time. I want to thank. Thank you so much. Pamela Kelly, thanks to you, Director of Elder Affairs for the City of Method. Thank you for joining us and thank you for coming on the program. And I think this was a great program. I think people learned a lot.
[Pam Kelly]: John, thank you for having me. And any questions anybody ever has, please come down to the Senior Center or give us a call or even email. We're always very happy to help.
[John Petrella]: And I'm gonna be sending people your way. You might see me, I'm gonna send myself. Yeah, I am. I know I am. Thank you. All right, so I also want to take a minute, I want to thank everyone who has been watching the show, and I want to thank you for your feedback. If you would like to appear on the show, you can contact us, methodhappenings02155 at gmail.com. You'll be able to watch replays of this program on Method Community Media Access Channel. Please check out our website. You have to check out our website, methodhappenings.com. Bruce does a great job with it. And you can now either view or listen to the podcast of this program. You can find all of our shows on YouTube. Just go to youtube.com and search for Method Happenings. so please like and subscribe to our channel and our videos of course and you can also find us on facebook at medford happenings we also have our own subreddit which you can find us at reddit.com slash r slash method happenings And while that's a lot, and for the Method Happenings team, Paul, Marco, Bruce, James, I'm John Petrella, and all's I can say to Method is stay informed. Thank you all.
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