Pulaski County Human Services is reviewing its accomplishments over the past year. Executive Director Jacki Frain presented an annual report to the county commissioners Monday.
She said moving the organization’s west side facility into the former Medaryville library has worked out particularly well. “We’re up to 17 volunteers that are keeping that open in the evening for the children,” she said. “That’s been a really good project. All’s they do is call me and say, ‘Can we be open another hour?’ I go, ‘Sure.’ But, you know, there’s costs associated with that. The funding for the centers – we only get about 50 percent of what it really costs to operate it.”
Frain also said Pulaski County Human Services continues to get support from other organizations in the community. “That’s our big thing, is our community partnership group because many of these people have service needs that are beyond the scope of what we do, and we make sure we link them and we’re working really well with several programs the county has going on,” she said. “And our partners group’s been meeting since 1981, so we’ve been around a long time for that.”
She also highlighted some of the educational opportunities offered by the organization. “We do a lot of what we call focal point activities where we offer seminars to people,” Frain said. “Right now, we’re planning a three-section seminar to work on fraud and elder abuse, and we’ll be targeting, offering the training with the Adult Protective Services folks and then the Attorney General’s Office, not just at our senior level, but the bank tellers in the county are real excited.”
Frain added that elder abuse and exploitation are big issues in Pulaski County. “We deal with that a lot,” she said. “Last month, we had three Adult Protective Service cases reported to us that we called the folks from LaPorte in to come investigate, and all three of them were substantiated. That’s kind of sad. Neglect and exploitation of elderly – it’s even here.”
She pointed out that Pulaski County Human Services can’t intervene directly. Instead, the organization works to make sure the right authorities are notified.
