WAIKAPU - The Maui Long-Term Care Partnership has officially changed its name, but not its mission.
Now called the Aging With Aloha Coalition, the group of about 100 members countywide pledged to continue its work to support a community-based model of services for senior citizens who want to "age in place" and not in institutions.
"We'll just continue doing what we're doing," coalition Director Rita Barreras said during the partnership's annual meeting Thursday at the Maui Tropical Plantation in Wailuku.
"For us, we've found our niche."
The partnership was established about five years ago with financial backing from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Five years later, it has received praise on the county and state levels for accomplishments including:
* Development of a Web site with information on long-term care assistance available in Maui County.
* Establishment of programs for high school and college students who are interested in careers in long-term care.
* Success in winning changes in local government for the benefit of senior citizens, including initiating a program to get the elderly into home care programs.
Aging With Aloha Coalition, like the Long-Term Care Partnership, will continue to be a collaboration of Maui public, private, government and nonprofit agencies "that is working together to pioneer a social change about what it means to age well."
The coalition has received $275,000 from the County of Maui to continue its mission of promoting improvements and change in the state's overall care of senior citizens.
"We believe we have something special here in Hawaii where we respect our kupuna, our elders," Barreras said. "We want to preserve that."
Hawaii AARP President Stuart T.K. Ho, 71, served as last week's keynote speaker at the coalition's annual meeting.
"Long-term care is a community problem," Ho said. "It is not just a problem for this coalition."
AARP lobbied this past legislative session for the establishment of a state Long-Term Care Commission. Tony Krieg, chairman of the coalition's leadership team and chief executive officer and president of Hale Makua, was appointed to serve on the state commission.
Ho said AARP understands the need for and shortage of long-term care beds, but it also shares in the coalition's goal of more support of home- and community-based services for senior citizens.
Krieg expressed pride in the partnership's work Thursday.
"We have influenced public policy at the state and county level," Krieg said. "Our efforts have made sure that individuals waiting in hospitals throughout the state had the opportunity move to home- and community-based care by linking the Medicaid and Medicaid waiver funds together, which was previously not possible."
Krieg said the federal and state governments have approved a program designed to link Maui's elderly with health and human service organizations that are helping individuals 55 and over who require nursing care. The care can be provided in a homelike setting.
"This program will assure that no one enrolled falls through the cracks," Krieg said, calling it "the best chance for frail elders to continue to live at home."
The program will be initiated on Oct. 1, he said.
* Claudine San Nicolas can be reached at claudine@mauinews.com.
