I did a presentation today at the Senior Center for an audience of about 20 people about the results of the City’s “Senior Readiness Survey.” The Senior Readiness Survey was developed in 2001 by the Minnesota Board of Aging. The survey was developed for communities to use as an assessment tool to see how “ready” they were to accommodate the needs of a growing senior citizen population. The survey asks seniors to rate the transportation, housing and senior-oriented services of their community. Seniors also rate the community for its ease of navigation and the availability of support for people that care for seniors.
Eden Prairie’s seniors gave the City fairly good marks in most areas. The City could be easier to navigate. We hear that from everyone, not just seniors. They felt that there were good housing options for seniors. Most of the respondents are pretty sure that there are adequate services available for seniors, but they’re not exactly sure because they’ve never used them themselves. We also heard that people were pretty sure that transportation services were available, but they’ve never used it personally because they still drive.
There were two commons themes in the results of the survey for me. First, the senior population we have right now is still rather independent. They want services to be available for their fellow seniors who need them, but they don’t think they’ll use them themselves. Second, they aren’t sure what services are and are not available.
My initial conclusion is that we need to think about how we market the availability of the City’s senior services. Not just the ones provided by city government, but services targeted to seniors in general. There’s a lot going on out there, but the message is just not getting out. We can do a lot better in this area.
