News & Updates
March is Social Work Month and at LiveOn NY, we celebrate our members who are essential to the work we do in making New York a better to age. Throughout the pandemic, social workers in the human services sector have been on the frontlines working tirelessly to ensure all New Yorkers have the support they need. Here are quotes from some of our members on what moved them to become social workers and their experience as an essential worker.
LiveOn NY stands in solidarity with the Asian American and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) community, in light of the recent murders in Atlanta. We mourn and honor the lives tragically taken this week. For too long, Asian American and Pacific Islanders have been the target of violence, harassment, and discrimination in our nation including New York.
Today, LiveOn NY announced a partnership with the Reframing Aging Initiative, which is a multi-year strategy to counteract ageism and improve the way policymakers, stakeholders, and the public think about aging and older people.
For decades, LiveOn NY has come to the City prior to budget adoption to highlight the importance of the aging services network, and to share the fact that, despite providers work in communities across our City, the Department for the Aging (DFTA) budget remains at less than ½ of 1% of the overall budget. Even with a growing, increasingly diverse older adult population, this has yet to be redressed. In fact, in recent years, providers have been promised millions of dollars in funding for Senior Centers that never came to be allocated, while also experiencing significant cuts and uncertainty to the much needed Indirect Cost Rate (ICR) initiative.
The time is now to commit to older New Yorkers and remove the barriers that have pushed out communities. Unfortunately, LiveOn NY and our members have seen the hurdles older adults have experienced to simply get a shot, and distribution has also revealed the racial inequities that already plague communities of color. As it stands, Black and brown residents, who represent 22% of the City’s population, have only received 9% of the vaccines.
