Blair Senior Services has eliminated seven staff positions, while cutting back on core services, due to flat funding from the state for those services over the past 16 years and the recent ending of special COVID allocations.

The steady $2.67 million a year from the Department of Aging became increasingly inadequate, until annual federal infusions of $500,000 at the start of COVID provided a “stay of execution,” said agency CEO Steve Williamson Tuesday.

When that COVID funding ended at the beginning of July, it left a $500,000 budget hole due to a decade-and-a-half of inflation, forcing the agency to cut staff and reduce hours at its four senior centers; start phasing out its medical equipment and supply and personal emergency response programs; trim its home delivered meal and personal care services; shrink transportation sponsorships and add restrictions on employee health insurance, Williamson said.

“How do I feel about it?” Williamson asked rhetorically. “Not very good.”

It would be worse if not for the $500,000 generated by program income and fundraising, he said.

It’s a situation that is being replicated at area agencies on aging statewide, with pressure on the supply end, due to the flat funding, and also on the demand end, due to a rising number of seniors needing help, he said.

The agency has cut operating hours for the senior centers on 12th Avenue in Altoona, in Tyrone, in East Freedom and in Williamsburg from the old 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. to the new 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., five days a week.

The agency has cut its home-delivered meals program, which served 1,100 clients last year, from 148,000 meals to 125,000.

The agency has shrunk its funding for personal care, which served 169 clients last year, from $592,000 to $452,000.

Under the three-year phase-out of the $250,000-a-year medical equipment and supply program and the $54,000-a-year personal emergency response program, the agency will maintain service to existing clients, but won’t take on new clients.

The money thus freed will be transferred to the home-delivered meals and personal care programs, which will enable the agency to serve people now on waiting lists in those programs.

Those transfers reflect the “shifting of service dollars from lower to higher priority services,” Williamson said.

“Baths or food versus medical equipment and supplies and fall buttons,” he said. “They’re all needed — they’re all bad choices, but in terms of people’s basic needs, I don’t think people have a hard time understanding why we’re selecting personal care and meals.”

The agency’s role is to provide personal care and socialization to help people age in place better and longer, thus delaying the “inevitable” need for more intensive care in nursing homes and hospitals, according to Williamson.

Williamson declined to criticize the legislative priorities that have resulted in the cutbacks for agencies like his, which serve the “social” end of elder care.

“Legislators making those decisions are making very tough choices” — much like the hard choices his agency has had to make, Williamson said. “It’s a real quandary,” he said.

At 19.1%, Pennsylvania has the ninth-highest percentage of people 65 and over among the 50 states, according to the Population Reference Bureau.

That percentage is growing, as it is in states all over the country, but it’s growing faster than Pennsylvania in states in the sunbelt, the south and the west, Williamson said.

Those states are getting increases in funding for social services for older people, he said.

Funding decisions related to elder care are complicated by the inevitable falloff in percentage of seniors after the baby boomer wave passes in 10 to 15 years, because lawmakers realize that once funding is provided, it’s hard to scale back, Williamson said.

At least 60% of the $2.67 million that Blair Senior Services receives for core programs must go to in-home services, Williamson said.

The agency spends 73% of that funding on such services, he said.

No more than 10% may be spent on administration.

Blair Senior spends about 7%.

Much of the rest goes for senior center operations and congregate meals.

The agency has a total budget of about $14 million.

In addition to the core programs, it provides shared rides and Medical Assistance transportation, it runs a National Senior Service Corps operation and it hosts two state Department of Aging call centers.

The funding that pays for those is “categorical,” earmarked for particular programs, Williamson said.

Blair Senior Services “touches” about 16% of Blair County’s senior population, the highest percentage in the state, according to Williamson.

It was 24% before COVID, he said.

The falloff was typical for agencies all over Pennsylvania, he said.

The state Department of Aging receives funding mainly from the federal government, based on a formula that includes the state’s elder population, and from the state’s lottery program, Williamson said.