ElderNews

Apparently Bradford County's Area Agency on Aging had been allowing criminals to fulfill community service requirements via programs that cater to elderly residents such as Meals on Wheels.

While it is reported that all volunteers for the Agency on Aging programs are screened prior to providing services, the agency's policy for accepting volunteers is now under review.


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Empty-nest syndrome a thing of the past?  According to researchers at Oregon State University, middle-aged adults now have rather occupied "nests" as they often are helping their children and aging parents at the same time.  Its not uncommon to find adult children struggling with employment and housing solutions returning to their parent's home. Simultaneously, older people are living longer and in need of assistance.  Interestingly, the former nesters tend to be more willing to provide help to their adult children:

The researchers found that most middle-aged parents with young adult children are fairly happy to help them out, and they understand that getting started in life is simply more difficult now. Some research has suggested that age 25 is the new 22; that substantially more parents don’t even expect their kids to be financially independent in their early 20s; and don’t mind helping them through some difficult times.

Yet, middle-aged children helping aging parents seem to feel more of a burden as their parent's needs increase while their health declines.  Whereas its become more accepting for adult children to turn to their parents during times of economic uncertainty, when aging parents need additional assistance from their families, there is less a sense of preparedness and mixed emotions about the role reversal.

"As a society, we still don’t socialize people to expect to be taking on a parent-caring role, even though most of us will at some point in our lives. The average middle-aged couple has more parents than children.”  {via Psych Central}