Service Coordination

"[The service coordinator] has always been knowledgeable and helpful to me in getting services for my mother. I hope that this program continues and that the coordinator remains on-site."

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) created the service coordination program in the early 1990s to help seniors in subsidized housing find appropriate providers and services.

Service coordinators serve as the link between seniors and disabled adults who live in public housing and an array of available services and providers. In many cases, it is through the work of a service coordinator that an elderly person is able to get a lift chair, help with housekeeping, home-delivered meals, or even reduce their out-of-pocket medical costs. For many, access to these types of services means they are able to continue to live independently, in a non-institutional setting.

Though service coordinators are often nurses or licensed social workers, they do not provide hands-on care. Rather, they work within a housing development to create new services or educational programs, advocate for residents, work with resident councils to improve the development's community life, assist with community outreach, and educate housing management staff on aging issues.

Service coordinators and housing management staff report noticeable improvements in the community's environment and in the everyday lives of residents and their families.  In Hamilton County, Council on Aging has seven service coordinators at eight senior housing developments in Hamilton County. On a resident satisfaction survey conducted in 2008, 95 percent of survey respondents indicated that service coordination staff in their building always or usually did a good job connecting them to the information, services or other resources they needed.