DEAR FRIENDS,

I am very pleased to be sending you The Park Slope Geriatric Day Center Newsletter. This is the first issue of what will be a regular publication, and we hope it will serve several purposes. We want to thank the Starr Foundation, the Anonymous Foundation, and the James N. Jarvie Commonweal Trust for their support of this new venture.

-Most importantly, we want to provide information to all our friends and supporters, particularly the families of the people who use our services, about resources for the againg in Brooklyn. Each issue will offer support and suggestion to improve the quality of life for our clients and their families.

-The Newletter will offer a window into our services to friends in the community as well as physicians, medical staff, and clergy who might reger familie who need for help to PSGDC.

-We find that many of our neighbors in both Park Slope and the greater Brooklyn community are unfamiliar with the work being done at PSGDC. We hope that this newsletter will open a door to the community and encourage our neighbors to become involved and support our effors.

All of the services we offer are designed to enable seniors to stay in their homes and avoid both isolation and premature institutionalization. As our society become even more important. In this country, more than 70% of senior citizens in need of long-term care are receiving it from family members who are often over-whelmed, stressed and then feeling guilty. Our entire health care system is subsizided by the services of the family members of the elderly and ill.

The original program for grail elderly at the Center on 14th Street began 17 years ago, when it became obvious that the traditional senior center did not serve the needs of older or more physically disabled clients. In the last several years, our services have benn expanded to include The Family Resource and Adult Day Serviceds Center at 1 Prospect Park West, which houses the five-day Dementia Program and offers Saturday respite care for caregiversand Creaciones de Hispanos, our Spanish language program designed to reach out to those in our community whose first language is Spanish. The transportation program now has six buses that carry seniors to both Centers and also bring them to medical appointments, escorted shopping and other senior programs in Brooklyn. PSGDC increasingly uses a family system approach in an effort to organize services to meet the families wishes to keep elderly clients at home and keep the family intact. It is our goal to be a "one-stop" eldercare provider offering support to caregivers by providing help to them at all stages of a member's needs.

We will use the pages of this newsletter to keep you informed of current and new services to clients and caregivers, and to track our progress in reaching our goal-becoming the "hub" of information and assistance to clients and caregivers in Brooklyn. We hope to reach out in innovative ways, and look forward to hearing from you about your needs and the ways in which PSGDC can be of service. If you have any questions or suggestions for future articles, please contact me at (718) 499-7701 or psgdc@psgdc.org.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,
Marianne Nicolosi