Senior Centers in America

Senior Centers in America presents the most comprehensive and current examination of this important topic available today. Written by one of the leading researchers in the field, this book presents an exhaustive review of local and national studies to provide a complete and multi-faceted analysis of senior centers. Major topics include: historical development and changes over time, center resources and organizational characteristics, activities and services, factors associated with participation, participant versus non-participant profiles, linkages and focal point functions, policy issues such as effectiveness and serving the frail, and future senior center scenarios. The book is research-based and identifies areas in need of additional investigation. However, it is also targeted to practitioners and policy makers and is intended to assist them in formulating policy and examining issues central to senior center planning and operation, now and in the future. Krout makes a strong case for the importance and necessity of senior centers, and presents a cogent analysis of the issues and challenges they must respond to in an era of resource shortfalls, shifting social and health policies, and a changing elderly population.

Readers of this book will gain a greater insight into senior center issues and a heightened sense of the need to explore these issues much more fully in the future. For this reason, it should be read by anyone involved with social services to the elderly.

JOHN A. KROUT is Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York, Fredonia. He wrote The Rural Elderly and The Aged in Rural America (Greenwood Press, 1983, 1986). Krout has published numerous articles on senior centers in the International Journal of Aging and Human Development, The Gerontologist, Research on Aging, and the Journal of Gerontological Social Work, among others. He is secretary of the Delegate Council of the National Center on the Rural Aging and a fellow of the Gerontological Society of America.