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THE CONFERENCE OF STATE COMMISSIONS ON AGING AND FEDERAL AGENCIES, 1952

PARTICIPATING STATE AGENCIES

California: Interdepartmental Coordinating Committee on the Problems of the Aging

Connecticut: Commission on the Care and Treatment of the Chronically Ill, Aged, and Infirm

Florida: State Improvement Commission, Citizens' Committe on Retirement in Florida

Illinois: Committee on Aging

Massachusetts: Subcommittee on Problems of the Aging, Recess Commission of the State Legislature on Revision of Public Welfare Laws Michigan: Governor's Commission To Study Problems of Aging, Interdepartmental Committee on Problems of the Aging

Minnesota: Commission on Aging

New Mexico: Governor's Conference on the Aging

New York: State Joint Legislative Committee on Problems of the Aging

North Carolina: Special Committee on Aging

Pennsylvania: Joint State Government Commission of the General Assembly

Rhode Island: Governor's Commission To Study Problems of the Aged Washington: State Council for the Aging Population

West Virginia: Governor's Committee on Aging

Wisconsin: Committee on the Problems of the Aged to the Legislative Council

PARTICIPATING FEDERAL AGENCIES

Department of Agriculture

Department of Commerce

Federal Security Agency

Housing and Home Finance Agency
Department of Labor

Veterans' Administration

The governors of the following States and Territories which have no official commissions or committees sent delegates: Alabama, Arizona, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Mississippi, Montana, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.

Also represented was the Council of State Governments.

CONFERENCE OBJECTIVES

1. To provide opportunity for State commissions to review and consider developments in their work methods and programs through learning what other commissions are doing, and through mutual discussion of their problems and plans.

2. To provide opportunity for State commission members and staff to become acquainted with personnel, resources, and programs of the Federal departments and agencies, and to determine their relationship to State and community action on needs of the aging.

3. To provide opportunity for program personnel of the Federal agencies concerned to meet State commission members and staff and to become acquainted with commission programs so that they can anticipate the impact of commission activities on established Federal, and State-Federal programs.

4. To provide opportunity for States interested in establishing commissions on aging to obtain guidance from the experience of commissions now operating in other States.

FOREWORD

This report is based upon a transcript of the proceedings of the general sessions of the Conference of State Commissions on Aging and Federal Agencies and on the summaries prepared by the planning committees of the various work group sessions. A preliminary draft was submitted for review to all participants.

The report does not atempt to describe the day-by-day proceedings of each panel or work group session. Rather, it is organized under such headings as seem to offer the best opportunity to summarize the total content of the discussion. The close interrelationship of the problems involved tended to break through the neat orderliness of the agenda. Not only were discussions, initiated during the panel sessions, carried on in the work group sessions but, in many instances, the very nature of one work group's interest led it into extended comment on matters officially allocated to another. This was perhaps inevitable in a field where these interests tend so constantly to overlap one another.

Some of the topics, it will be noted, were not dealt with as fully as others. This was largely because the representation from many of the States was not sufficiently well balanced, in terms of the interests or special competence of the individual delegates, to cover the entire range of the aging problem. Public welfare, for instance, was heavily represented, whereas there was only a handful of conferees to speak authoritatively on matters of public health, employment, or housing. However, it was evident that the great majority of the delegates were clearly conscious of the multifaceted nature of the problem and recognized that for a State commission or committee to be fully effective its membership must reflect all areas of interest.

It should also be emphasized that the conference made no overall recommendations of any sort. Following the pattern established by the National Conference on Aging in 1950, several of the individual work groups suggested concrete lines of action that, in their opinion, could profitably be taken, but none was presented to the conference as a whole for formal adoption.

Finally, the report can in no way be regarded as a definitive statement on the part of the State commissions or committees. A large number of the delegates taking part in the conference were present as representatives of governors of States in which no such groups had been officially established. Others were from States in which the commission or committee had come so recently into existence that they had little active working experience to draw upon. What appears in this report, therefore, must be regarded as a summary of the congregate "thinking out loud" by a number of individuals actively concerned with the problem of aging as it affected their own State. In general, they discussed those matters which were on their minds or on which they wanted information, without attempting to arrive at a wellrounded exposition of the entire subject.

In presenting this report, the Committee acknowledges the help of Merrill Rogers of the Federal Security Agency in organizing the material and undertaking the actual writing. It also wishes to pay special tribute to Miss Ann H. McCorry of the Agency for her work in helping to organize the Conference and in preparing much of the background material for it.

COMMITTEE ON AGING AND GERIATRICS,
FEDERAL SECURITY AGENCY.

1952.

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