LC center helps with aging issues

By Cynthia Pegram

Published: March 5, 2008

About a quarter of a million people live in Central Virginia and population estimates for 2010 show that there will be fewer people under the age of 19 than those over 60.

It’s the issues that face the older group - about 57,000 people - that capture the attention of Denise Scruggs, new director of the Lynchburg College Belle Boone Beard Center on Aging and the Life Course.

“The first boomers are coming into the system by 2011,” she said. “And their expectations are different.”

As are the numbers of those born between 1946 and 1964. In 2005, there were an estimated 78 million baby boomers.

The population of Virginians age 60 and over, which made up 14.7 percent of the state’s population in 1990, will grow to almost 25 percent by 2025, according to the Virginia Department for the Aging.

Today’s answers to aging problems are not going to solve tomorrow’s challenges.

Scruggs is helping reshape the LC program, named after the late Dr. Beard, a Virginia sociologist and author who founded the LC center.

The program once included gerontology studies, but now has a different focus that includes the community and public.

“We’re a resource,” Scruggs said. “We’ve becoming more of an advocate; we’re reaching out more than we’ve done in the past,” she said. “We’re going out into the community more, sharing the statistics on the number of aging members in the population and the upcoming senior boom.”

—For example, LC will host a mini series on aging, which is open to the public, on four consecutive Thursdays in February. Also in February, winners of a student photo competition, “A Portrait of Aging,” will be announced.

—In March and April, the Beard Center on Aging will work with AARP and the United Way of Central Virginia to host five “Community Conversations on Aging,” one in each county and one in Lynchburg. Under discussion will be what’s needed, what can be done better, and the major issues seniors face.
—In May 22 and 23, the annual Conference on Aging begins.

The old LC Gerontology Center program faded out from what Scruggs describes as long-term, ongoing lack of interest and enrollment. She termed it “a factor nationwide in gerontology, not just at LC.”

She sees it, in part, as a response to misunderstanding about aging.

“There are a lot of stereotypes in working with the aging population,” said Scruggs.

People accept stereotypes and assume that elderly persons don’t know as much as others, and that working with them is not as exciting or as interesting as working with other groups.

Some people assume older people are a little demented, that diminished capacity comes with age. However, Scruggs said, “Nowhere near the majority of older people have dementia.”

People also tend to make assumptions about the mental capacities of nursing home residents, and are sometimes uneasy about interacting with them.

“There are a lot of people in nursing homes that are very alert, oriented and mentally aware,” she said. Rather, she said, they are physically unable to care for themselves and “are in a nursing home to get that physical assistance.”

Scruggs became interested in the field of aging as a young woman in Natural Bridge where her family provided in-home care for her grandmother, who had Alzheimer’s, and for her dad, who was disabled by heart disease.

In those days before respite care and in-home supports, “the family took on the responsibility and did all the care and worked hard to find a person who would come in and help out, give relief,” she said.

During the eight years before their deaths, Scruggs saw firsthand the toll care giving can take. But she also saw the importance of the role of caregivers, the joy, involvement, and improved quality of life they can provide to those who depend on them.

Scruggs is a former director of Westminster-Canterbury of Lynchburg’s memory support unit for residents with dementia and is the former director of residence life and housing at Sweet Briar College. So she knows the problems and joys people in those stages of life face in community living and how important it is for residents to be neighborly to each other.

Her bachelor’s degree is in social work, and she has master’s degrees in student personnel services and in administration of justice and public safety.

Her role at LC encompasses the facets of her experience.
“We’re looking at the total issue of aging, not just a certain population,” she said. “To me, that’s exciting.”

She gets to work with students, which she’s always enjoyed, and on issues of aging and with older individuals through projects like last year’s Alzheimer’s Memory Walk at LC.

One issue that concerns her is that services to the older population are declining, despite the growth in that population. She said an evaluation of Virginia programs shows that more services for seniors were provided in 2003 than in 2007.

“We’re saying that seniors are just as important as our youth - our youth are our future and so are our seniors.”

She would like to see more interest from lawmakers.

She believes that, “for most of our communities in Region 2000, aging, the aging population, are not a priority at this time.

“You see it in budgets, you see it in the topics of conversation, you see it in the business that is being conducted daily.
“The future is here,” she said. “A lot of people are on waiting lists.”

The “Aging and the Life Course” free mini series at Lynchburg College will be held from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. in the Brewer Townhouse Meeting Room. Sessions are:
—Feb. 7 - “Healthy Aging.” Denise Scruggs. Learn about what ages you, and how you can take one day at a time for a healthy and productive long life
—Feb. 14 - “Maintain Your Brain: How to Live a Brain Healthy Lifestyle,” Cindy BonDurant Director, Alzheimer’s Association of Central and Western Virginia.
—Feb. 21 - “Living with Grief & Loss,” Leana Kail, executive director, Gentle Shepherd Hospice. The difference between healthy and abnormal grief, the kinds of losses that create grief. How to work through grief, either for yourself or to help someone else through the process.
—Feb. 28 - “Coping with Care-giving,” Beverly Craft, Generation Solutions’ director of personal care services. Stress management, caregiver wellness and how to find assistance.
For more information or directions to Brewer Meeting room, call (434) 544-8456.