By Suzanne Perry
The White House Conference on Aging, which ended on Wednesday, adopted 50 resolutions to guide national policy on aging over the next decade, including several to promote volunteering by baby boomers and older Americans.
However, some of the 1,200 delegates left frustrated because President George Bush did not attend, which limited the conference's visibility, and because they were not allowed to debate the resolutions before adopting them.
"It's sort of demeaning to all of us not to be treated as individuals who have opinions," said Bruce Reeves, president of the Washington Senior Citizen's Lobby, in Olympia, Wash.
Delegates to the four-day meeting, the fifth of its kind and the first in a decade, voted by ballot on 73 resolutions that were drafted by the conference's policy committee in areas including Social Security and Medicare, medical care, housing and transportation, employment, and civic involvement. They then divided into workshops to figure how to translate the 50 resolutions with most votes into action.
The number one resolution, with 1,061 votes, asked Congress to extend the Older Americans Act -- which provides money for nutritional and other services to help older people stay independent -- within six months. Most of the other top 10 resolutions called for improvements in health care, including long-term care, for older people.
One resolution proposed a national strategy to promote volunteer work by "current and future seniors" -- an issue of growing interest to nonprofit groups and foundations, which are hoping to tap into the energy and expertise of the huge wave of baby boomers who begin to turn 60 in January. It ranked number 25 with 699 votes.
Melvin Woods, a member of the conference policy committee, told the delegates that volunteer work can give older Americans a sense of "social connectedness" and "self-development."
"Most of us senior citizens and 'seasoned citizens' probably have very few more mountains to climb, but there are still a lot of hills out there," said Mr. Woods, president of Rubicon Public Affairs, a consulting firm in Sacramento, Calif.
He said workshop participants who discussed the resolution proposed that the President appoint a commission to develop a blueprint for tapping into the "social capital" of baby boomers. They also proposed a national marketing campaign to encourage volunteering, a national online volunteer clearinghouse, a toll-free number such as "211" to link people to local volunteer opportunities, and tax credits to encourage businesses to expand opportunities for employees to volunteer and to compensate people for the time and expenses they incur volunteering.
Mr. Woods also reported on a separate resolution, ranked number 28, to expand the scope of the National and Community Service Act, which authorizes federal volunteer programs for older people including Foster Grandparents, Senior Companions, and RSVP.
He said delegates proposed doubling the number of participants in those programs to 1 million by 2010, easing restrictions that make it hard for all but the poorest Americans to participate in the Foster Grandparents and Senior Companions programs, and lowering the age eligibility for those two programs from 60 to 55.
The delegates were selected by governors, members of Congress, the National Congress of American Indians, and conference organizers. The policy committee drafted the resolutions based on suggestions from more than 400 meetings that took place across the country over 14 months, as well as written comments.
Unlike previous White House conferences, delegates were unable to discuss or amend the draft resolutions from the floor. But policy-committee members said they planned the new format so that delegates could spend time on ways to ensure the resolutions are put into practice, rather than on fine-tuning language.
"Instead of spending enormous amounts of time dotting i's and crossing t's on resolutions and then having them disappear into the woodwork over the next 10 years, what has really triggered tremendous interest among these delegates is the fact they've got their sleeves rolled up, they're trying to figure out how do we make stuff happen?" said Thomas Gallagher, president and founder of Greylock Group, a venture-capital and real-estate company in Henderson, Nev.
Marvin Schacter, a member of the California Commission on Aging, was among delegates who complained that this was the first White House Conference with no appearance by the President. "The fact that the President isn't here is an incredibly important statement," he said. "The President by not being here guarantees there is no publicity in the papers."
The White House did not immediately respond to calls asking why President Bush decided to stay away from the meeting.
After further consultation with governors, the White House Conference policy committee will submit a final report to the President and Congress next summer. More information about the conference resolutions is available on the Web site of the conference, http://www.whcoa.gov