Service coordinators in federally subsidized senior housing drew on their professional knowledge, connections and relationships to identify and address pandemic-related challenges for residents, according to two surveys by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.
Although the COVID-19 pandemic created barriers to even the most basic resources — including access to food, medication, medical care, transportation and social experiences — service coordinators were integral to helping residents navigate services and limit pandemic disruptions, according to surveys that JCHS conducted in collaboration with the American Association of Service Coordinators.
But service coordination is not consistently available across all US Department of Housing and Urban Development-funded properties that house older adults and residents with disabilities. Samara said that only half of properties dedicated to housing older adults have a service coordinator.
“They improved both the efficacy and efficiency of programs and increased resident resilience,” JCHS research associate Samara Scheckler wrote in a blog. “In practice, service coordinators managed information by assessing need, identifying resources and coordinating response.”
During a webinar sharing key results of the surveys, Scheckler said they found that during the peak months of the pandemic, service coordinators were acting as access points of information at a time when conflicting information was being reported and everyone was still learning how to stay safe.
“They were really the nexus of information,” Scheckler said Friday during the webinar. “They were excellent messengers because they had relationships built before the pandemic, and they knew how to communicate with residents and their families, and they were trusted as a source of information.”
Service coordinator experiences
In June 2020 and November 2021, service coordinators were surveyed about their experiences in affordable senior housing during the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings were recently published in the Journal of Gerontological Social Work.
Early in the pandemic, service coordinators took on additional roles as buildings were closed, social work / case manager visits were infrequent, visitors were restricted and community organizations reallocated resources away from typical activities to address urgent community needs.
In response, service coordinators tailored solutions to each property, according to the survey results. They repurposed hallways and common spaces to safely engage residents. They connected residents to each other through phone trees, pen pal programs and buddy systems, the report noted.
According to the survey responses, 40% of service coordinators said they spent more time coordinating resident benefits in 2021 compared with pre-pandemic periods. Half of 2021 respondents said they spent more time working with community-based organizations during the pandemic, and more than 80% were managing a partnership to address food, health or healthcare, and personal care or assistance.
They also built capacity for residents to use new technology, because the pandemic changed access and interactions with medical professionals. Respondents estimated that half of residents accessed more virtual healthcare than before the pandemic, and two-thirds used more virtual mental healthcare. More than half of the surveyed coordinators said they spent more time developing and organizing device lending and technology literacy programs to ensure resident access to the internet and devices.
Concerns about mental, physical health
One area the service coordinators said they struggled with was access to mental health services. The coordinators estimated that 65% of residents had less social interaction than in pre-pandemic periods. Even in later 2021, when vaccinations were available and social distancing restrictions were relaxed, coordinators indicated, 55% of residents showed more signs of loneliness and anxiety than before the pandemic, reporting depression, hoarding, disordered substance use and even suicidal thoughts or attempts.
Respondents also expressed concern for resident physical health. In 2021, they estimated that 53% of older adults had worse physical health than before the pandemic and that 62% were getting less exercise.
Amy Schectman, president and CEO of Massachusetts-based 2Life Communities and a webinar participant, called service coordinators the “lynchpin to effective support of housing.”
She said the two biggest threats to aging optimally are loneliness and affordability, which she says are most effectively addressed when people live together and access services as a group.
“One of the things we learned collectively from COVID is, I think we have to stop talking about aging in place,” said Schectman, a 2022 McKnight’s Women of Distinction Hall of Honor inductee. “I think we have to start talking about aging in community from an efficiency, from an efficacy and from an effectiveness perspective.”
Sheckler noted that additional study is needed to understand the negative effects of the pandemic on residents who did not have access to service coordinators, to better assess the current “patchwork” of funding available to meet the needs of residents experiencing a service disruption.
