As an important part of its mission, BAiP offers resources of many kinds to its members with the goal of helping neighbors lead safe and comfortable lives as we age in place.  There are a lot of NYC agencies and providers whose full-time job is to find and maintain resources for seniors.  A prime contact is the Department For The Aging.  Their resource guide is here.  And the New York Statewide Senior Action Council is also a good source of information.  The National Aging in Place Council is a senior support network.  And finally, the Manhattan Borough President's Office publishes a guide called "Age-Smart Manhattan: Senior Resources for Better Living" and a "Help Guide" of useful telephone numbers.

Being able to age in place relies on some retirement planning basics and you will find some resources in this library.  But a good place to start is the Social Security Administration and its retirement planner.

We also have a brief directory of other organizations that may suit our members' needs.

The U.S. Administration on Aging has a website called Eldercare Locator to connect you to resources.  They may be reached by phone at 800-677-1116.

Over the years, we've amassed a fair number of resources for BAiP's members. Please browse the categories at right for topics of interest to you, and click to view relevant items in our library.

We hope you will find helpful information. We encourage you to verify the resources and to suggest new items by emailing us:  webmaster@bloominplace.org.

On December 7, 2018, Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health ran a blog piece on our recent intergenerational discussions about Climate Change.

The West Side Spirit featured BAiP's mission to build community on its cover on July 3, 2018 in a piece researched and written by former executive director of Goddard Riverside, Stephan Russo. The Spirit also published an aging in place resource guide recently.

On November 2, 2017, our artists' clothesline show held at Hosteling International New York was covered in Our Town.

On October 5, 2016, Roosevelt House and Hunter College awarded BAiP the 2016 Joan H. Tisch Community Health Prize "for outstanding accomplishment in the field of public health."  In addition to the preceding link, more information is here.

On August 16, 2015, BAiP was covered as a model in The Star, a Malaysian newspaper in an article by Loh Foon Fong. To read the article, visit this link or click on the downloadable file below.

On May 12, 2015, BAiP was lauded by The West Side Rag for contributing to the livability of the Upper West Side which had recently been cited by AARP as the second most livable neighborhood in the U.S. To read the article, visit this link.

On February 15, 2013, The New York Times featured Bloomingdale Aging in Place in an article entitled "Sun City It's Not," about seniors on Manhattan's Upper West Side. To read Constance Rosenblum's piece, click on the downloadable file below or the picture above.

From the office of the Manhattan Borough President, this "Help Guide" is filled with useful contact numbers when dialing 311 does not get you where you want.  To download the guide, click "Download File" next to the pdf icon below or simply scroll through the numbers listed in the remainder of this post.

BAiP works hard to serve its mission.  However we recognize that members may need to access other more in-depth services.  The following list is a compilation of local organizations and service providers that might be useful.

General Senior Services

DOROT
171 West 85th Street
Phone: (212) 769-2850
dorotusa.org
Whether you’re looking for friendship, exercise, volunteer opportunities, creative arts, cultural activities, frozen Kosher home delivered meals, escorts to medical appointments, referrals, or even personalized computer lessons, you may take advantage of the many programs and services offered by DOROT.

Goddard Riverside Community Center
593 Columbus Avenue
Phone: (212) 415-5630
goddard.org/grcc/programs/olderadults/
Goddard Riverside provides case management services. Their Senior Center offers social activities, exercise, outings, and nutritious reduced-price meals.  For their home meals program, see "Selfhelp Community Services" below. To learn more, visit the website above.

Jewish Home Lifecare
120 West 106th Street
Phone: (800) 544-0304
Email: connections@jewishhome.org
jewishhome.org/our-services/homecare/social-adult-day-progam/
JHL offers a Social Day Program for adults living at home. It includes assistance with personal care, breakfast, lunch and snacks, along with a wide range of activities and wellness programs.

LiveOn NY
49 West 45th Street
Phone: (212) 398-6565
Email: info@liveon-ny.org
liveon-ny.org/mission-history-impact/
LiveOn NY offers eligibility screening and application assistance for benefits and entitlements for New Yorkers over 60.  LiveOn can assist ou with SNAP, NY Rent Freeze, Medicaid, Medicare Savings Program, HEAP and Low Income Subsidy.  LiveOn also participates in New York's Senior Medicare Patrol program to help detect mistakes or potential fraud in Medicare payments.

Met Council
Phone: (212) 453-9500
metcouncil.org
Met Council provides help with emergency financial assistance, food and clothing, as well as eviction prevention, advocacy and other legal issues.  It operates several affordable housing sites for low- and middle-income seniors throughout New York City.  And its Project Metropair makes free home visits to seniors for minor home repairs. Services include installation of grab bars and locks, moving peepholes, and reinforcing window gates. Met Council serves all people in need, regardless of ethnicity or background.

Morningside Village
Email: info@MorningsideVillage.org
Phone: (347) 688-6599
lifeforce-in-later-years.org
Morningside Village offers volunteer help to seniors living in the area bordered by West 108th and 118th Streets from Riverside to Morningside Drives.

One Stop at JASA
475 Riverside Drive, Suite 1846
New York, NY 10015
Phone: (212) 864-7900
onestopseniorservices.org
One Stop helps seniors live safely and independently in their own homes by providing legal, housing, elder abuse, and general assistance services. One Stop at JASA is a unique walk-in agency where compassionate professionals go the extra mile to help older adults solve their problems--all in one place. Services are free and available in English, Spanish & French/Creole.  One Stop counselors are on-site in our neighborhood on Tuesdays and Thursdays at the Franciscan Community Center at 214 W. 97th Street.

NYC Council District 6 Office
Helen Rosenthal, Councilmember
563 Columbus Avenue at W. 87th Street
Phone: (212) 873-0280, Ext. 202
The Councilmember's office is a good resource for information on senior housing and services.

SAGE - Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders
305 Seventh Ave, 15th Floor
sageusa.org
Dedicated to improving the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) older adults, SAGE offers a full-time center where you will find a comprehensive array of services, support groups, and programs related to arts and culture, fitness, food and nutrition, health and wellness, and lifelong education for LGBT elders.

Selfhelp Community Services - Meals-on-Wheels & Case Management Program
520 Eighth Avenue, 5th Floor
Phone: (212) 787-8106
Selfhelf Community Services (SCS) case management can assist with referrals and entitlements.  SCS social workers do intake for home-delivered meal services provided through Encore Community Service's and Goddard Riverside's meal program.  These include delivery of hot, frozen or kosher meals.  The first step is to schedule a client assessment.

SPOP - Service Program for Older Adults
302 W. 91st Street
Phone: (212) 787-7120 x514
spop.org/services
SPOP’s mission is to enhance the quality of life of older adults and to foster their independent living through the delivery of comprehensive mental health and supportive services, advocacy and education. It offers counseling in English, Spanish, French, Mandarin, Creole and Korean. SPOP also provides bereavement support; an adult day center for adults with Alzheimer's, dementia, or memory loss; and a continuing day treatment program for adults with serious or persistent mental illness.

Healthcare Guide for Older New Yorkers
nyc.gov/html/dfta/html/benefits/health.shtml
This annual guide from New York City's Department for the Aging (DFTA) contains lots of useful information on Medicare, Medicaid, Long- Term Care Insurance and other important subjects. The full title is "A Complete Guide to Healthcare Coverage for Older New Yorkers."

Mental Health and Psychology Resources Online
psychcentral.com/resources/
At the above link you will find a range of mental health resources available online. This collection of mental health and psychology resources is the oldest annotated online directory of its kind.

Lifeline - Telephone Discount Program
Lifeline is a government assistance program that offers qualified customers a discount on their monthly telephone bills. To see how it works and who is eligible, click on this link:
www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/lifeline-support-affordable-communications

As we get older, it is important to keep moving as well as to listen to our bodies and our minds.  At some point, we all have to cope with pain management, stress reduction and falls prevention.  And we have to keep challenging ourselves by remaining active through gentle and moderate exercise.

For ways to tend to body and mind, BAiP has a variety of resources that you may download below.

Gathered from many of our presentations, the resources here include:

• An overview of complementary and alternative medicine
• An introduction to mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR)
• How to manage pain
• How to cope with chronic pain such as meditation, relaxation, massage therapy
• A brochure on fall prevention (see also a video here and here)
• Information about arthritis exercise
• How to prevent and get up from falls (scroll down)
• How to get a good night's sleep

The information here is compiled from several presentations.  "Healthy Aging and Mobility" presented on December 6, 2018, featured a useful presentation which you may view here.

“Move It or Lose It!” presented on February 27, 2014, featured Barbara Greenberg, a certified trainer for Tai Chi for Arthritis; physical therapists Angela Bonita and Kearns Julian; and Vishwa Prakash, a master trainer for laughter yoga.

On February 16, 2012, our panel “Improve your Health-A Mind, Body Spirit Workshop” was presented by doctors and fitness instructors from Mount Sinai's Martha Stewart Center for Living, led by Patricia Bloom, MD.

On November 18, 2010, BAiP presented “Don’t Let Pain Take Over: Strategies for Coping with Chronic Pain” featuring Dr. Carl Grey, a fellow in palliative medicine at Mt. Sinai Medical Center and JD Elder, BS, LMT, who coordinates the massage therapy program at Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

Falls Prevention Resources

On September 13, 2017, BAiP held the successful panel "Making Sure Fall is Just a Season: Falls Prevention."  The panel generated a lot of resources on how to prevent falls, including a directory of additional organizations.

Compiled below are the handouts as well as the presenter's slides with thanks to Linda Iennaco for "Balance and Bones."  Download the items below and do your own fall risk assessment, then figure out what your next best move it to prevent a fall by building upper and lower body strength, performing the chair rise exercise, and strengthening your bones through dietary choices.

And finally, if you do fall sometime down the line, there's a document below that can help prepare you to train for the best method to get up.

Sleep Resource
On April 25, 2019, BAiP held a presentation by Daniel A. Barone, MD, Assistant Professor of Neurology and Associate Medical Director of the Weill Cornell Center for Sleep Medicine at Weill-Cornell Medical College, entitled "Get Your ZZZ’s: An Overview of Sleep and Sleep Disorders."  The talk included a discussion of insomnia, sleep apnea, disorders related to underlying medical problems, changes that come with aging, and how to sleep without medication. A similar talk of his is embedded below for reference.

To help our members prepare for emergencies, we offer several handy items including important downloadable forms, which you will find below.

The first is a contact form for basic personal information and essential contacts to leave accessible in your home in case of emergency.  The second is a companion health information form to list all the medicines, vitamins and supplements that you may take to keep with your emergency contact information.  A third downloadable document provides references and tips to assist you in filling out these forms.   
 
Experts on medical emergencies stress the importance of having this information handy. They advise having copies with you and posting the information on or near your refrigerator or at your bedside where first responders are authorized to look. It is important to keep this information up to date. Recent events also underscore the need to prepare for emergencies.
 
If you need hard copies or if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to email us at emergencyinfopkt@bloominplace.org or call (212) 842-8831 ext 32. ​​

Click on the links below to download the forms.  Tips to fill out these two forms are here.

Emergency Contact Form
Medication/Supplements Form
Emergency Safety Review: A Tip Sheet of What to Have at Hand


Some of this information was prepared by our Neighbor-to-Neighbor Committee and some was presented at our April 30, 2009, panel “Emergency Safety Review."

Important note: If you are attending an event in a "looped" room and use a hearing aid with a t-coil, see the instructions below for using an induction loop.

Financial assistance may be available to obtain hearing aids. The first step for financial assistance resources for hearing aids is to check with your health care insurance provider to find out if they carry hearing aid coverage. After that, check out the list of resources at the Hearing Loss Association of America to see if you might be eligible for any of the programs listed there.  Another NYC resource is the Center for Hearing and Communication.

A good recap of what to do when you think you have hearing loss may be found here.

Here is a brief list of further resources:

• Connect with the Hearing Loss Association of America.
• From the Hearing Loss Association of America:  Basic Facts, Types of Hearing Loss & Treatments, Hearing Aids.​
• Age-related Hearing Loss
• Communicating with your Healthcare providers: Guide
• NYS Consumer Guide to Hearing AIDS: Download PDF
• Leisure Resources: TDF and Theatre Access New York City, NYC Movies, 
• Tinnitus: Information from the Mayo Clinic and from Hearingpedia 

For a few more resources on the topic of hearing and hearing loss, please continue to scroll down.

Instructions: How to Use an Induction Loop with Your Hearing Aid

Most hearing aids have a t-coil, which is a separate copper microphone  from the one you usually use.  To use it, all you need to do is turn your hearing aid to the t-coil position. (The  t-coil also helps you hear  better on the telephone.)  If you do not know if you have a  t-coil in your hearing aid, ask your  audiologist. Often a  t-coil is in your aid but not activated; there is no charge to activate the  t-coil. If  the  t-coil is working well, it will pick up the signal from the loop and you will be amazed at how  well you can hear.

It is best to wait to turn your hearing aid to the  t-coil position until the speakers start using their  microphones since when you have the  t-coil on you cannot hear those around you. When the  t-coil  is on, you hear only what is coming through the sound source hooked up to the loop.

After listening to a presentation with a microphone (or a movie through a TV that is hooked up to  the induction loop), be sure to turn your hearing aid/cochlear implant back to the regular microphone setting so you can once again hear the people around you.

If you have some hearing loss but do not wear a hearing aid or have a hearing aid but no t-coil, you can access the same wonderful sound by using  headphones with an appropriate portable receiver.

What Exactly Is an Induction Loop?
An induction loop consists of three things: insulated wire, an amplifier and a sound source (e.g. a TV or a microphone). The wire is installed around the  perimeter of a room, usually in the ceiling or on the floor. The looped wire is connected to an amplifier (equipment used in stereo systems to make the sound louder) which, in turn, is connected to the sound source, several of which can be  hooked up to the loop at once by using a mixer. The system creates a magnetic field within the  looped area. The magnetic field signal carries the sound from the loop directly to the t-coil  (telephone program or telecoil or t-switch) of a hearing aid/cochlear implant or the special receiver  of a headphone set. All background noise is eliminated. It is an amazing technology that has been  used in Europe, mostly Great Britain, for 30 years and the U.S. is catching up.

For older adults certain questions arise more frequently, but all adults should be atuned to making estate plans. It is important to know what legal documents you'll need or what happens after your death. In a May 2018 panel, members of the City Bar Justice Center's Planning Estate Law Project, presented to a standing-room-only crowd for BAiP. We are providing their excellent outline below: "Planning Documents to Have to Age in Place." We suggest you download it and review it carefully. You may also direct friends and family members to this page.

Also, for the 2016 "Legal Services Directory for Older People in New York" published by Gray Panthers, please click here or download a copy below.