Nancy Morrow speaks on being a ‘Bright Star of Aging’
By Jeremy Rodriguez
Nancy Morrow feels strongly about combating issues related to aging, whether it’s related to schools of social work, in services for older adults or in the health care field.
“We need to advocate that older people are not lesser than younger adults,” Morrow said. “In my view, older people are often better versions of themselves because they’ve had experience, they’ve learned, they’ve changed, they’ve adapted. So, I think we need to honor older people. We need to recognize the tremendous resiliency of older people. Getting older isn’t easy in many ways but most older people are resilient, and they’ve got tremendous capacities and strengths. To see aging as just a trajectory that’s going downhill is a terrible way to think about older people. Older people learn new things. They do new things; they take on new challenges.”
In fact, the primary people who are most invested in creating change within community organizing are older adults. Morrow noted that this demographic has a wealth of information that can be invaluable to organizing work and in workplaces.
Morrow advocates for older adults throughout all her work, including as a consultant and trainer for PCA, as strategic development director for Connectedly (formerly the Supportive Older Women’s Network), and as a lecturer at University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Policy & Practice. To recognize her accomplishments, PCA’s Emergency Fund Coalition recently presented Morrow with the Bright Star of Aging Award. She called it “the honor of a lifetime” to receive this award, especially because it was awarded by people she has worked with and respected for nearly 40 years.
Her advocacy work dates to the 1980s with the Older Adults Protective Services Act (OAPSA) in 1987, which she was instrumental in creating. This act mandates reporting requirements on suspected abuse of older adults. Morrow said this law created connections between local Area Agencies on Aging (such as PCA) and direct services, such as legal assistance and behavioral health counseling.
“OAPSA established an entire system statewide to help older people who are at risk of serious harm — neglect, physical abuse, sexual abuse, financial exploitation — and (give them) access to services and supports,” Morrow said. “That was not existent before. It has done a wonderful job in creating that whole network of services and providing care and support to older people who need it.”
More recently, Morrow has been doing work to educate younger generations on issues related to aging. She has secured several grants from the John A. Hartford Foundation to provide geriatric enrichment to social work education at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Policy & Practice.
“Sadly, in many schools of social work, there is not a lot of focus on working with older adults,” Morrow said. “Many social-work students are not interested in working with older people. Something I feel sort of strongly about, and had to campaign about is to help students understand and see the wonderful world of working with older people.”
Morrow finds working with older people to be clinically challenging and interesting.
“I can’t think of another group that’s as interesting in terms of the interplay between their physical health issues that are occurring due to their aging process, their cognitive issues, and their behavioral health or mental health issues that may be happening. They’re dealing with many losses — loss of spouse, job and sense of feeling productive, as well as loss or changes in housing. They’re dealing with all of that. There’s also lots of issues around policy areas that are fascinating — Social Security, Medicare, and what’s happening with our other health systems and health insurances. All of that is, to me, really interesting.”
Morrow said that once students are exposed to working with older adults, they end up getting interested in the idea of working with them as a career. This exposure can come in the form of working in senior centers, visiting older adults in their homes and other opportunities that grants have helped provide.
Looking ahead, Morrow said there is still much work that needs to be done for older adults. This includes abolishing problematic language to describe older people, such as “old fogey” or “greedy geezer,” and acknowledging the value that older adults bring to their community.
“Let’s provide older adults with opportunities to use their skills and knowledge,” Morrow said. “Let’s have more programs where older people can volunteer or even be paid, maybe a small stipend, where we can use all those skills and demonstrate to other people that when someone might be 80 years old, they’re still very capable. The older people I talk to are ready and willing and would be thrilled to have more opportunities where they could contribute and feel valued.”
Jeremy Rodriguez is a freelance journalist, blogger, editor and podcaster.
PHOTO CAPTION: Najja R. Orr, DBA. FCPP< PCA president and CEO, presents the Bright Star of Aging award to Nancy Morrow at this past summer’s Emergency Fund luncheon.
