NSCLC is a Member of the National Legal Resource Center
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NSCLC is excited to be part of a team of six national organizations that will help the Adminhistration on Aging realize its goals of promoting home and community-based long-term care and enhancing choice and independence for older persons and their families.
The U.S. Administration on Aging (AoA) has selected the National Senior Citizens Law Center (NSCLC) to help lead the new National Legal Resource Center. NSCLC will be part of a team of six national organizations that will streamline their efforts to help the AoA realize its goals of promoting home and community-based long-term care and enhancing choice and independence for older persons and their families.
The Older Americans Act (OAA) has historically authorized funding for a national legal assistance support program, under which national nonprofits have received support from the AoA to provide, among other things, case consultation services and training to legal aid programs, elder law attorneys, and members of the aging services network. This support has been critical to those serving older individuals in local communities all over the country, and NSCLC has been providing this support since the inception of the OAA’s national legal assistance support program.
The AoA decided to integrate this national legal assistance network in order to help facilitate the AoA’s updated mission. The 2006 reauthorization of the OAA included a number of significant changes designed to modernize the delivery of aging services and long-term care and promote integrated access to aging services and consumer directed choice. These changes were aimed at enhancing the AoA’s historical effort to empower older persons to remain independent within their homes and communities for as long as possible. Initiatives funded by the 2006 amendments include the national expansion of the Aging and Disability Resource Center program and the Nursing Home Diversion program.
The AoA believed that an integrated national legal assistance program would both foster these initiatives and assist the AoA in meeting its new goals, and so it created the new National Legal Resource Center. Funding has been awarded to NSCLC and five other organizations to serve as a centralized access point into a national legal assistance support system for professional and advocates working in legal and aging services networks.
NSCLC will provide case consultation services for professionals and advocates in the field of law and aging, and the National Consumer Law Center will offer training services to the same population. The Center for Social Gerontology will provide technical assistance to States and local providers in the development of efficient legal and aging service delivery systems, and Elder Law of Michigan will provide technical assistance to a network of legal helpline professionals that provide legal assistance to older persons. The American Bar Association Commission on Law and Aging will provide professionals and advocates in aging and legal services networks with information and resources on legal and elder rights issues, and the Legal Services National Technology Assistance Project will assist in the development of content for the National Legal Resource Center website.
The work of the National Legal Resource Center is now underway. For more information, please call Gene Coffey, 202-289-6976 x. 206.
AoA: More information about the National Legal Resource Center
AoA Press Release about the National Legal Resource Center (May 1, 2009)
