One of the most common complaints people have about services for seniors is that they don't know what services are available or how to find them. Now electronic help has arrived - at least for those in Addison, Chittenden, Franklin, and Grand Isle counties. For over twenty years, the Champlain Valley Agency on Aging has been a source of information and referral about senior services, offering them mainly by telephone. One year ago CVAA put its comprehensive listing of local senior services on-line. At your convenience, you can find the answers to your questions yourself on the web at www.cvaa.org; click on Community Resource Guide. You may even find new questions.

The website offers detailed and up-to-date local listings - from help at home to nursing homes, from respite for families to legal assistance. You can find information about health services, fuel assistance, and Medicare, as well as listings of senior housing complexes and advice about funding for home modifications. Updates to the information are made continually, as staff learns about them, says web site coordinator Joel Gluck. Also, once every year, all of the agencies on the list are asked to complete a survey about their current status. Currently, the resource guide includes 450 agencies, 800 programs, and 1600 services.

Besides local contacts, like the Hinesburg Friendly Folks Senior Center, the website offers quick access to relevant state and national organizations. If you are researching nursing homes, you can find the address for the state quality assessment reports for specific homes. If you want to know everything there is to know about Social Security, you can find both the national and Vermont offices.

"We aim to provide as comprehensive a list as possible," Gluck says. "with multiple referrals on every topic to ensure readers a range of options." The guide includes all non-profit agency and government services, community and self-help support groups, residential care facilities and hospitals, and senior housing. It includes for-profit agencies and private practitioners when their services are not adequately provided by the non-profit sector. The guide does NOT include any agency that serves only its own members; or denies services on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, disability, or national origin; or that violates federal, state, or local laws or regulations.

"We welcome input from folks. Tell us what you like, what you don't like, what else should be included, Gluck says."       

"CVAA's web-based guide is not only a great resource for the community. It's extremely helpful for providers," says Jeanne Hutchins, manager of Elder Care Services at Fletcher Allen Health Care. "We can access the guide to answer our questions, and we can direct patients and clients to the guide for their information. Best of all, the guide eliminates the onerous task of trying to keep information current on individual provider web sites. Now we just have a link to the CVAA Resource Guide on our web site. This is something we've all wished for for a long time."

"I use CVAA's web site all the time to assist my clients. I just type in what I'm looking for, like transportation in Grand Isle, and up comes the information for C.I.D.E.R. (Champlain Islanders Developing Essential Resources). It's quick, accurate, and very user-friendly," says Scott Funk, a broker for reverse mortgages.

If you want your information from a live person, CVAA has a team of Information and Referral Specialists that can be reached by calling the Senior Helpline at 800-642-5119.

Barbara Leitenberg writes on senior issues for the Champlain Valley Agency on Aging. This article originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press.