As you may have learned, the Center for Advocacy for the Rights and Interests of Elders (CARIE) closed their doors on December 2nd after nearly 50 years of promoting the well-being, rights, and autonomy of older adults. This is a heartbreaking loss to our community, the stellar CARIE staff, and, most of all, the older adults they have served for the past 5 decades.
CARIE has been one of SeniorLAW Center’s closest nonprofit partners for over 30 years. We have been co-located with them for a decade, have partnered on countless projects, contracts and programs, and our teams have been costly intertwined. In the wake of this devastating closure, we are proud to share that SeniorLAW Center will continue CARIE’s legacy through the assumption of their Providing Advocacy for Victimized Elders (PAVE) project and team, and their extraordinary health care, long-term care and health equity advocacy work. We will be bringing several of their team members aboard to lead this work as we grow our impact and these programs’ capacities to deliver excellent client-focused services.
“It is so gratifying to see CARIE’s work continue through its long-term partner, SeniorLAW Center. To know that advocacy for health equity and older adults in long-term care will continue as we see regulations and residents eliminated is particularly critical as is continuing CARIE’s services to support elder victims of crime and abuse.” – Diane Menio, former CARIE Executive Director of 34 years.
We are immensely grateful to the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency (PCCD) for their financial support so that the PAVE team can join ours. This is a reflection of our long and close partnership with both CARIE and PCCD, and the importance of our joint work addressing and preventing all forms of elder abuse.
Through the support of the Independence Foundation and others, we are also transitioning CARIE’s advocacy around long-term care, residents’ rights and health equity for low-income older adults led by their Advocacy Director, Kathy Cubit. Kathy is a recognized expert in this field nationally and statewide and has held numerous leadership positions. She also has the distinction of being the longest-serving CARIE staff member, in her 38th year. We have worked collaboratively with Kathy on numerous policy and legislative issues over the past 25+ years.