By Fremont (CA) Mayor Gus Morrison
March 15, 2004

The City of Fremont's Aging and Family Services staff provides case management, caregiver support, peer counseling, and other services to seniors living in three city areas of Fremont, Newark, and Union City. The three cities have combined population of 300,000. Some clients are among the most-frail senior residents still living in their homes. Our goals are to keep them in their homes and to prevent their institutionalization.

With the recently increasing concern regarding natural and manmade disasters, it became apparent that if the handful of staff serving at least 300 clients at any one time were required to respond in such an event, they would be hard pressed to effectively help their clients. This is especially true if some staff were unable to get into the City to report for emergency duty.

The clinical supervisor for the senior programs attended a Volunteer Coordinator's quarterly meeting where he saw a large map of the City. On it were red dots indicating where the various neighborhood Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) volunteer members lived. A light went off in his head. The Geographic Information Systems staff used a secure listing of clients by name, address, city, and Zip code to cross reference client addresses with a sophisticated software program that maps addresses onto county designated lot numbers. The seniors were classified according to one of three levels of care being provided.

For simplicity's sake, low, medium, and high level of service was color coded green, yellow, and red, respectively. Because the software could also sort according to neighborhood, a secure listing of clients by neighborhood was generated.

In the event of a disaster, many of these homebound seniors will be unable to get to services necessary for survival. Therefore, the City of Fremont will bring them to the home. The efficiency of visual clustering will allow City staff to effectively serve groups of individuals, as opposed to one at a time across the entire service delivery area. Staff time and energy will be more appropriately distributed, as the six case managers normally serve across the same geographic area.

This model will soon be expanded to include mapping such clientele as persons receiving Meals on Wheels, and those utilizing local Paratransit services. Future use includes coordinating with first responders, such as Police, Fire, and Paramedic personnel to reduce inappropriate utilization of 911 services, and the CERT volunteer program as ancillary neighborhood responders in the event of protracted need.

A recent audit by the State of California, Department on Aging praised the Human Services Department for its mapping model, giving it "Best Practices" kudos. One of the visiting Program Specialists was interested in implementing this across the entire State.

For more information contact Suzanne Shenfil (510) 494-4551.