Shownotes
If you’ve ever wondered how older adults can age in place safely and with dignity, or what keeps things running in affordable housing buildings, this episode shines a light on the heartbeat of those communities—and on the people working quietly behind the scenes to make it happen.
I’m sitting down with Michelle Missler, President and CEO of the American Association of Service Coordinators, and Ellen Carey, supervisor at COAAA, for an honest conversation about service coordination—what it is, why it matters, and why most people haven’t heard of it.
You’ll hear more about my guests’ experiences working in affordable housing and aging services. We break down what a typical day looks like for a service coordinator: it’s a whole mix of connecting residents to benefits, offering wellness programs, managing emergencies, and building deep relationships within their communities.
Michelle Missler shares how advocacy at the national level is helping improve pay, recognition, and support for service coordinators everywhere. Ellen Carey gives us a glimpse into the daily realities on the ground, from juggling multiple needs to partnering with local organizations.
Here are 3 key takeaways for anyone passionate about aging services, housing, or community support:
- Service Coordinators Are Relationship Builders: The heartbeat of affordable housing, service coordinators form essential connections with residents, helping bridge gaps to benefits, healthcare, and community resources. Their work is personal, proactive, and absolutely vital for helping people age in place.
- Funding & Advocacy Remain Critical: From HUD grants to creative local partnerships, sustaining service coordination is a major challenge. Recent advocacy is driving real progress, including better pay and deeper support structures – but continued investment is needed at every level.
- Standardized Tools & Training Make A Difference: Systems like Ask Online and comprehensive training programs from professional associations are leveling up what service coordinators can deliver, amplifying their impact across hundreds of buildings nationwide.
Moments
00:00 Service Coordinator Advocacy and Support
05:24 Proactive Senior Case Manager
06:43 Community Support and Coordination
10:04 Community Programs and Partnerships
15:16 "Salary Survey and Advocacy Plan"
18:22 Service Coordinator Funding Methods
20:23 Funding Models for Service Coordinators
23:04 Advocating for Timely HUD Funding
26:39 "Funding Service Coordination Innovations"
31:41 Ask Membership Benefits Summary
35:27 "Service Coordination Data Evolution"
36:58 Building Partnerships for Community Needs
41:39 Ellen's Remarkable Crisis Coordination
45:54 Essence of Relationship Building
49:32 "Aging Autonomously in Community"
51:17 Service Coordination Appreciation Remarks
Let me know what you think of this podcast, as well as any ideas you have for an episode. Email me at kwhite@coaaa.org!
Copyright 2025 Central Ohio Area Agency On Aging
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/
Transcripts
Welcome to Pretend I Know Nothing About. I'm Katie White, your host and Administrator of COAAA. On today's episode, we are joined by Michelle Mistler, president and CEO of the American Association of Service Coordinators, and Ellen Carey, supervisor at COAAA. Let's get into it. Welcome to the podcast. And we are just going to start right off with introductions. So Ellen, can you introduce yourself? Tell us about your role at COAAA.
Ellen Carey [:My name is Ellen. I'm with the senior options department. I'm a supervisor and I supervise the. I supervise traditional case managers with senior options, but most of my work is involved with our service coordinators who are in either HUD buildings and or low income tax credit buildings. So I have about four of them with different populations in every building. So they each have their own flavor of personalities. Okay.
Katie White [:And season four is all about bringing in external collaborators and partners. And so we've got Michelle Missler with the American association of Service Coordinators. Can you tell us a little about your role and your background in aging too?
Michelle Missler [:Yeah, absolutely. So my role at the American association of Service Coordinators, or ask as we call it, is that I'm the president and CEO. Our association is in place to provide support and education and empowerment and engagement to the individuals that Ellen is also providing support to. So we have across the nation, over 4,000 service coordinators that are our members and our organization is there to support them in any way that they might need. The biggest thing in the past year has been especially around advocacy, public policy, making sure that not only the service coordinators that are in place today and funded by HUD continue to be in place, but then also grow that program and that profession as much as we can. So my journey to get there, though, I'll make it brief, but I started my career as a service coordinator, so it's kind of a full circle moment for me to be in this position. I came out of college, knew I wanted to work with the aging population and then thought I would wanted to work in a nursing home, but didn't find a nursing home that wanted me. So wow.
Michelle Missler [:I mean I applied to all the nursing homes and they wanted. Yeah, anyway, and so NCR is where I National church residence is where I landed as a service coordinator. But I'd heard nothing about that profession, knew nothing about it, hadn't learned anything about that during my time in school with a degree in social work. So I learned very quickly what service coordinators do and fell in love with it from the very beginning. The fact that service coordinators are in Place to really help individuals who are choosing to age within community, within their community. And they're there to support those individuals, making sure that they have all of the resources that they need to age in place and stay connected, understand and navigate all of the entitlement and benefits that they have access to, but most importantly, serve as a partner to the general community. Right. Service coordinators, I often say the relationship builders like their first line of defense as someone is aging.
Michelle Missler [:So a service coordinator works in a property, as Ellen said before, varying individuals, it's very diverse property. And the service coordinators are there to assess and identify the needs of maybe over 100 residents at a time. But that one service coordinator is there to build relationship with those 100 people. And then as a result of that relationship and identifying needs, the service coordinator then reaches out to local community organizations like an area agency on Aging, to help get services connected into the building. So service coordinators are really that, you know, first line of defense and the first person that is going to build the relationship and then serve as the hub of getting those services in place. So that's where I started my career. And I did that for about two years, and then I moved into a role very much like what Ellen's doing, where I kind of supervise or did quality assurance and did the oversight of service coordinators at the organization. And I really loved that work and was able to be innovative and grow in that profession.
Michelle Missler [:I stayed there for about 15 years, and then I left and pursued work within the community doing collaboration, did that for about two years. And then I made the biggest jump of my career and went to the Franklin County Office on Aging as the director there and oversaw not only the senior Options program, but the levy and all of the partnerships there, as well as adult Protective Services. When this position came open, it was a natural fit. So I took leave from the county and then came into this role back.
Katie White [:In 2019, right before the pandemic. So we'll get back to that, because I'm sure you have a lot to say about that. So you both were service coordinators. And so tell me about Ellen. Kind of a day in the life of a service coordinator coordinator in one of our buildings.
Ellen Carey [:Well, I was just at one of the buildings yesterday, and her day consisted of being available open door policy and just allowing folks to come in, ask a question, provide verifications for systems benefits, make referrals to senior options services, because she does happen to be a senior options case manager. So she has access in that respect for dual roles. She also had A Medicare specialist come in to help a waiver client who will be affected by the transition of Micare Next Gen to point in 2026, and based on his capacity and or lack thereof, making sure he doesn't fall through the cracks as far as having services when it comes about, the transition comes about. So he's going to be set on the 1st of January for a new program that is MyCare Next Gen. So she's very proactive in a lot of ways that she thinks about who she has in her building and what they may need. And so she just did. In fact, I took some notes down, don't have them with me, but I wrote down the multiple different things. So she had a couple people come in for SNAP benefits.
Ellen Carey [:She had somebody come in for completing a waiver application through jfs. She had Mac mattress referral questions. She had Medicare specialists in. So just the plethora of what she is capable of doing, having the knowledge of the community benefits and the community partners come in. She rarely had any downtime. And I just kind of sat there and reviewed my knowledge as a service coordinator, having been there in that particular building, actually helped out in that the Medicare specialist needed some information that the client didn't have. And I was able to find that to make that transition actually happen. I don't know, had we not been able to find a particular piece of information, had it would have occurred yesterday, you know.
Ellen Carey [:And so then I think about another building who had a community liaison officer in for, you know, safety issues as far as particular allegations that have come to our agency. And so just trying to make sure that, you know, our service coordinators are safe, the tenants, the elderly tenants of that building are safe, and that we are both knowledgeable and understanding of what it may take to keep tenants in building safe because they're not necessarily in some of the better neighborhoods of our community. So it's a plethora of things of what they can do, what they do do. You know, it's that whole jack of all trades and master of nothing.
Katie White [:Yeah, well, master of being amazing. But okay, so there's a lot of reactive pieces to it, obviously, right? Like being available and kind of being able to answer anything and everything that comes. But then there's also some planning of like events and resources like that too. So when I visited a couple of the building, there was a commodity food box delivery day. I think some of them have farmers markets. You bring in produce markets. Produce markets, education. I've been to emergency preparedness training.
Katie White [:So talk a little bit about locally, what we offer them. Michelle, I'd love to hear some of the best practices that are going on.
Ellen Carey [:Across the US So we do have. Every building is different. We do have one particular building that has both commodity food boxes and the fresh produce market. They are on different days. They are available to the seniors 60 or over. Now, I will say some of the buildings have under 60 folks. So that does bring an obstacle into who's eligible for what. They are doing some Medicare open enrollment programming right now.
Ellen Carey [:They just. I think three buildings have done flu vaccine shots. No, I'm sorry. Four buildings have done flu vaccine shots. One's about to do it next week. One building has tried to do a mammogram, like portable mammogram, but there is some liability with that as far as being portable. So that has not come to fruition. Gosh, the things that they do, you know, is just.
Ellen Carey [:I don't know that I could name them all as far as who they bring in.
Katie White [:Fire safety, it's a lot of health and wellness safety. And do the residents help come up with ideas?
Ellen Carey [:Yes, there's surveys that they put out. What would you like? What do you see as, you know, your necessity? One building is trying to get BINGO to go along in order to have some presentations and then entice them to join. So you got to kind of know your scope of who you are with in order to get the involvement. Yeah, we also do service coordination out in Licking county and she has a lot of partnerships with the county agency there that they do a lot. They help her a lot with programming. So, you know, it's the gamut from BINGO to fire safety. It's the gamut from flu shots to, you know, food insecurity.
Katie White [:What are some of the cool or different or innovative things that you're seeing across the country?
Michelle Missler [:Well, I mean, I think there's innovation within all of it, but from what Ellen just said, it's just put that on a national scale. Right. So the program was developed, the service coordinator program was developed through hud. And what they said was that service coordinators should be hosting education and wellness programs. One of the things that we've learned over the years, obviously, is it's a lot easier to get folks to come out when it's an activity. So Ellen spoke about bingo. That's a great thing to do. Right.
Michelle Missler [:It's combating social isolation and all of those things. But from HUD's perspective, you know, there should be some sort of educational component. So what we as an association try to do is find partners that will come in and help support all of our members if possible. We have a really amazing partnership with WellCare right now. We've had it for the last few years.
Katie White [:What does WellCare do?
Michelle Missler [:WellCare is a subsidiary under Centene. So it's a health insurance company. So it's a Medicare Advantage company. I think it's Advantage, but it's a Medicare company. And so they have this amazing community engagement program. And so what they do is they've got community engagement people all across the nation and they're primarily there to do like, they want to get together with the residents, they want to do activities. They have money where our service coordinators don't. That's one of the biggest challenges that they face when they're trying to do, quote, unquote, education, wellness or activities.
Michelle Missler [:Right. You don't have any money.
Katie White [:Yeah. You have $10 to try to get 50 people to come do something fun.
Michelle Missler [:The head budget doesn't allow for them spending any money. They're already grossly underpaid. If I, you know. Yeah, we know that. We did a salary survey last year.
Katie White [:What's the average salary?
Michelle Missler [:It depends on where you are, obviously, location wise, but I think it's a little over $20 an hour. So we did an entire salary surve. It's like it's on our website. You can find it. But it really. We compared it to the census data in each location to determine if they even have enough money for the cost of living. And what we learned was that most service coordinators are living under the cost of living for the area. Right.
Michelle Missler [:And so the support that they're providing our residents, they technically could also benefit from SNAP benefits, you know, all of those different things.
Katie White [:Can I ask another question on that? Sorry. Do they. Did you ask about benefits? Like do a lot? Are, are they also offered benefits, retirement insurance?
Michelle Missler [:Everything depends on the organization.
Katie White [:Oh, I can't wait to read that report.
Michelle Missler [:You would love it.
Katie White [:I wish I knew ahead of time.
Michelle Missler [:That's okay. So. But that's a great kind of going off of the whole advocacy or now I'm moving into advocacy from the wellness and education events because we did that survey. What we were able to do last year is then take that data to HUD and say service coordinators need raises this grant cycle. HUD said if they need a raise, then put it in. We have stories of service coordinators who got a significant raise.
Katie White [:That's incredible.
Michelle Missler [:What the language now says is that you can apply for a service coordinator to get the Same pay as what a social worker would in that area. So that's the threshold that we found and that we utilized.
Katie White [:So you'll look at the median income of a social worker in an area, and then if I am a service coordinator or building, I can apply and I can try to match that salary, Right?
Michelle Missler [:Correct. So not you as the service coordinator, but the property manager. So there's nuances to all of this. So. And I think as time goes on, we'll be able to get folks more appropriately paid. But as it all works, like the way the service Cornea grant program works is that HUD says, here you go, here's a grant. Way more work to that process than what I just said.
Ellen Carey [:But there you go for you, and.
Michelle Missler [:A grant for you. The reality is that, you know, somebody applies for the grant, they said, this is the. This is the average salary. So we've always done the salary survey, and it has always kind of helped a person who's applying for grant to say, this is what we should pay because this is the area median income for service coordinators.
Katie White [:Okay.
Michelle Missler [:When I first took over this role, I'm like, I don't want to do this anymore. We can't change the salaries. This feels like you're asking somebody for something and you're not able to do anything with it. Right. And so that's why when we did the salary survey this time in 20, I think it was 2023. I could be wrong. Yeah, I think it was 2023. I said, when we do that, we also need to have an advocacy plan in conjunction with it so that we're doing action in addition to just collecting data.
Michelle Missler [:And so that's what we did. But so a lot of times when service coordinators are in place, they could be funded by a grant in order to ask for additional money. You know, HUD said, okay, yeah, ask for the additional money. Somebody who's already in place. There's a lot of nuances within an organization to make that raises happen.
Katie White [:Yeah.
Michelle Missler [:So we didn't see as much success of people getting additional money now. But the language is there, which is the most important thing.
Katie White [:Absolutely.
Michelle Missler [:And now organizations can start to plan towards getting those raises. So, yeah, that's just. I don't even know how I got on that tangent.
Katie White [:I don't know, but I love it.
Michelle Missler [:I know you and I could do this all day.
Katie White [:Okay. So you do this annual report, and then you feed the information back in so that the service coordinators can be better supported, whether it's financially, but I also want to clarify. There are building managers who apply to the funding. So do the service coordinators work for the companies of the building managers, always or no? Okay. It's very different everywhere.
Michelle Missler [:Every model looks different. There's no standard model across the board.
Ellen Carey [:I know when I went to the 2024 conference, I was surprised at the amount of people who are employed by management because of the conflicts between management and social service coordinators and how that works. Yeah, I was at. I was very. I want to say the word I come to mind is I admire those folks for being able to handle that conflict.
Katie White [:Yeah. So, okay, so HUD funds a building. It can be a management building. You could work for that management building. And what you're saying is sometimes issues that service coordinators need to work on are between the residents and the management building. And so if you work for the management building, that could be really difficult. And Cool A has service coordinators that work for Cool A. So we are that one step, kind of remove that partnership with whoever's managing the building.
Katie White [:And how many buildings are we in, Ellen?
Ellen Carey [:We are in 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.
Katie White [:We're in six buildings. Okay. And so funding for each of these varies. Right. So just like the model varies, the funding varies too. And quite honestly, it's becoming really difficult to be able to fund service coordinators. So, Michelle, talk a little bit more about like the advocacy and kind of what's going on at the federal level with the HUD funding.
Michelle Missler [:So let's back up a step. And how can a service coordinator be funded? I think is the most important question we can answer, which is service coordinators are often funded in one of three ways, I would say. So the first way is what I was talking about earlier. That's a grant. So an organization, a building, a management company will say, hey, we've got a HUD funded building with older adults or vulnerable adults, or if families that are vulnerable living here and we want to get somebody in here to support them. So they would apply through a NOFO process, a notice of funds opportunity used to be availability, but so then they would apply through that process. If they are awarded that money, then the service corner can be hired and that grant it continuously renews. And so part of our advocacy efforts, especially this year when we saw federal funding being pulled back as early in the year, a lot of the service coordinated grants were in jeopardy of not being continued to be funded.
Michelle Missler [:So we had to do a ton of advocacy. At that time we went to D.C. and we were talking with anybody who would listen and say, hey, you cannot let this funding go. Because organizations, what happens in a grant environment is that the organization pays for the service coordinator out of pocket and then is reimbursed by HUD for that position. And so if they're not going to get reimbursed, then we're going to see service coordinators either be laid off or let go. And then we see it's, you know, the snowball effect of all that is absolutely immeasurable because then you've got residents who don't have that support and they're left without anything.
Katie White [:So if we take a pause and play that out locally. So without naming the buildings, some of our buildings that are funded in this way have not been reimbursed. Therefore we have not been reimbursed. And so it is that fine balance of this is a mission critical service that we provide. And lots of funding's being cut in all different kinds of ways. And so it's a scary place to be in. But it does sound like the funding will.
Michelle Missler [:The funding is coming, is coming like that funding is coming. The other process, there's, I could go on for hours about the process of HUD funding. That's just for the grants. Now for a budget based, what we call a budget based service coordinator. So that's a service coordinator that the organization has extra money in the property budget to be able to pay for a service coordinator. Throughout my career in the last 20 plus years in the service coordinator industry, it ebbs and flows of what's the quote, unquote safest. So is it safer to have a grant? Are you going to be more secure that way? Is it safer to be budget based? I've even been with an organization that like, we made a real strong effort to get everybody budget based and move everybody away from grants. I don't know if there's a safer way.
Michelle Missler [:At least with a budget base though, the reimbursement process doesn't exist because you're just part of the operating budget. But what it requires is for properties to ask for rent increases. Now that rent increase does not impact our residents. The rent increase is the difference from what HUD pays for a resident to live in the property and what, you know, what the residents paying. So most of the residents living in HUD affordable housing have very fixed incomes, very low incomes. And so in some of these projects they will look at the income of a service of a resident and say, okay, well they can only afford. Based on a whole calculation, they can only afford. Let's say $100 a month in rent.
Michelle Missler [:Well, when it's a HUD property, what HUD does then is say, well, the market rate for that one unit is $1,200. That resident's going to come to the table with $100 and HUD will pay the $1,100 difference. So when I talk about rent increases, it's if we do an analysis of the market and they say, oh my goodness, you know, the market rate here is $1,300. Now we've got an extra $200 per unit to potentially fund a service coordinator. Right.
Katie White [:So, so well explained. And we do have at least one budget base building that we do service coordination in.
Michelle Missler [:Yeah. And so that those types of buildings aren't impacted the way your buildings that are grant funded right now. Right, right. Every year grant funded are in this limbo place. Every year organizations like CO AAA is, you know, waiting for this reimbursement. So we're what, it's October 24th, we're waiting on funds from January 1st. So every organization that has a grant funded service coordinator has been footing the bill going into essentially debt waiting for that reimbursement. There's never been a time that that reimbursement has not come ever in the.
Katie White [:History of this program is very important for me to hear today.
Michelle Missler [:And what our role is is that we can, we are in continuous communication with hud. We find somebody at HUD that will talk to us, that will stay abreast of what's going on. And we advocate like crazy, like you have to get this money out, you have to do this. When we got the salary survey information, you know, that was my public policy. Melissa Harris, she phenomenal, but she's the one who got in front of HUD and said, you have to add this language. We have to increase these salaries. So we were successful this year in getting language added in legislation to say that the grants had to be at least addressed or reviewed by a certain amount of time and then they need to be paid by a certain amount of time. It used to be that you would wait the entire year to get money.
Michelle Missler [:Now at least there's some money that comes out early and then the rest of it will come out at a later time time. This year has just been not a good example of the work that we've done advocacy wise. If this was a well running year for government, then we, I think we would have seen a lot of money move faster.
Katie White [:Okay, so there's the HUD grant, there's the Budget base. What's the third option?
Michelle Missler [:The third would just be out of the pocket of the organization. So Ellen said earlier that there's some, I think you said that you have some tax credit. Yep. So a tax credit is a completely non HUD property. So that type of a property is built, it's an affordable housing property and it is built by developers in an organization. So they go and they get what we call tax credits. I will not explain all of this because I do not understand it fully. But essentially large, large organizations say, hey, you know what, we're going to contribute to this in, in order to get a tax credit.
Michelle Missler [:So that's why they call them tax credits. And so in order to develop it, they get money from large organizations who receive those tax credits. Then they build this building. And it is not the model that I explained to you around. You know, HUD pays a portion of the money, the rent, and then the resident pays a portion. These properties and these developments are built just to have reduced rent all across the board. So rather than the 1300amonth market rate, maybe it's only 900amonth. Right.
Katie White [:But the residents paying all of it.
Michelle Missler [:Residents paying all of it, but it's reduced. It's not what you would go down the street and pay. It's something that is set aside specifically for lower income individuals. You have to qualify to a degree, not the same degree that you do for HUD housing. So we're seeing more and more and more of those types of projects being built all across the nation, in central Ohio especially. And with those, because they're not HUD funded, there's no HUD grant. There's no, you know, like I was explaining, budget based Service coordinator, there is a budget possibility to have service coordination invested in, but we don't see that happening.
Katie White [:And it's usually pretty nominal.
Ellen Carey [:Right.
Katie White [:I remember having a conversation with potential new building and it was like $10 per resident per month. It's like, well, that's, that's not enough to fund a person in there. Right.
Michelle Missler [:So they'll do workarounds. So most of these new, these tax credits will have to address support services. Right. Because you've got a vulnerable population living there. So part of the application process to get funded through the Housing Finance Authority is that you have to have supportive services, but you can be creative. So you could have someone who comes in once a month. You know, it's what you can afford. So a big part of our advocacy is trying to educate tax credit owners and operators that this is an invaluable resource.
Michelle Missler [:Just like the property manager that you're investing in, just like the maintenance person that you're investing in. But that's the third way service coordinators are funded. And so what we see there is a lot of really unique innovations where we see fundraising that's funding a service coordinator, we see partnerships that are funding a service coordinator. You know, I think there's a tremendous opportunity to continue to collaborate within communities. My goal, one of my thoughts has always been like, how do we get COAA case managers or a AAA case manager working in a building like that in some way, shape or form? Right. Like just thinking outside the box around the services that already exist in a community. How do we all work together to make things better for those individuals living in that housing? But for now, the big advocacy that we do is trying to get, you know, developers and operators to understand the importance of service coordination and then continue to try and get their investment within it.
Katie White [:So that's the best explanation I've ever received and I've tried to seed through and read all of these things constantly so that I need to call you more. Okay, so Ellen, when we think about we're in multiple buildings, each building is set up and paid for a little bit differently. Does the service coordination that we offer look and feel consistent across the buildings, regardless of the funding?
Ellen Carey [:Regardless of the funding? Your answer would be yes, regardless of the funding. Now where the obstacle comes is the population within the building.
Katie White [:Okay, but the services are standardized.
Ellen Carey [:Pretty much services are the same. If you need SNAP benefits, we're there to do SNAP benefits. If you need waiver, we're there to assist you with the process. If you need healthcare, we'll help you try to find access to a healthcare provider.
Katie White [:Okay. Okay. So that is standardized. And then there's a software system that I believe Ask has that we use. And what type of information are we putting in about residents and what are we tracking in the software system? What's it called?
Ellen Carey [:Ask Online.
Katie White [:Ask Online.
Ellen Carey [:Well, basic case note, you know, kind of your, who you were with, what your activity was, like what your purpose was and your outcome, you know, Ask Online, I learned something new about it every day. Their support system, their IT system, their customer service is rock solid and very, very fast. I love it. So it's just a basic, it's drop down boxes. So it's very user friendly. So you have your drop down boxes as to what your purpose was and then you have a narrative of, you know, kind of what your drop down.
Katie White [:Boxes represents and is Each resident in Ask Online and they've got a profile.
Ellen Carey [:You have to, you have to put them in.
Katie White [:Okay.
Ellen Carey [:And so the task is for, as a person moves in for the service coordinator to input that person with whatever information that they have and that the resident will provide. And then there's also a piece in the Ask Online that if the person does not want to be involved in any services and just wants to remain on their own, you can put them in like a non activated type of status. So it goes from very active to not active at all. Your eviction processes, your incident reports, as far as like topics of where you can input this information.
Katie White [:Okay.
Ellen Carey [:So it's extensive, useful. And I'm not just saying that Michelle's here because it's one of the better. We, you know, moved one of our programs, one of our buildings to that particular documentation system because we weren't able to really follow the other one very usefully. So when I do reports, I can just click and click and tab and find all the stuff there. I don't have to do my own calculations. I don't have to.
Katie White [:Oh, that's great. So the service coordinators are accessing it for their daily work with residents. You as their supervisor can go in and pull reports on the buildings that we're in. And then I'm just going to take a wild assumption and think that Ask can go in and pull things nationally. Oh, I love that.
Michelle Missler [:Yeah, I love that.
Ellen Carey [:So we have reports due by 31st October and came across a little webinar that I'm going to attend on the 27th. As to, I mean, I've submitted these reports before, but I'm going to say that maybe I've had some issues with submitting them and so people have asked. So I'm going to get the full scope this year and attend that one hour thing before I submit for 2024-2025.
Katie White [:Is that an Ask training?
Ellen Carey [:Yeah.
Katie White [:Okay, so there's a membership to Ask. So Michelle, walk me through what the Ask membership is, what it offers, how much?
Michelle Missler [:Right. So in order for folks to be connected to ask those 4,000 service coordinators across the country, we have a nominal fee. It's only $250 annually and that's paid for by the organization. If you have a grant that is built into the grant budget, it's not something that would come out of the organization's pocket. It is part of the service coordinator budget.
Katie White [:So $250 a year for service coordinator to be a member. It's not the building, the service coordinator.
Michelle Missler [:Based on member not building. So part of that membership though, there's a lot of obvious things that you get as part of a membership to Ask, but one of the main things is that you get a discounted rate for Ask Online. So there's like a 3,350dollar savings for ask Online. One thing that's beautiful about Ask Online, as someone who's been in outside the world of service coordination and came back is the, the affordability of a system like Ask Online, I think it's like what, 5.95 for the year? For the year. Wow. And so if you're not an Ask Member, then I think it's like 7.95 or something like that. So obviously it behooves you to be an Ask member for the system and the cost savings there. But also we do annual, we do training.
Michelle Missler [:So right now we're doing, we do monthly, no weekly webinar trainings. And those are if you're an Ask member, I think it's $50. And if you're not an Ask member, then it's like $75, I think, or something like that. The other thing that we have for service coordinators are all of these on demand courses. So once I took over the organization, we built out this robust library of education and it's on demand and it's starts with a brand new, let's say a brand new service coordinator comes into work. Rather than the organization figuring out how to train them. You just go to Ask and you go through this entire service coordinator foundations program. That's awesome.
Michelle Missler [:And we've created roadmaps for new service coordinators. What all do they need to take? And so they are required to get 36 hours of training from the very beginning, like the very first day to the end of the first year, and then 12 hours of training per HUD guidelines every year thereafter.
Katie White [:So your first year as a service coordinator, you have to have 36 hours of training.
Ellen Carey [:And can I ask for clarification on that? Is it from their hire date to their hire date or their hire date to the end of the calendar year? Okay, thank you. And yeah, I'm working with my new service coordinator on that. So I needed to know.
Michelle Missler [:So. But a brand new, my goal was that a brand new service coordinator, so someone like Ellen, if she has a brand new service coordinator, she can get them an Ask membership and send them over there over to us virtually. Right. And they will get their entire third, they can get their entire 36 hours of training. Through our programs.
Katie White [:And the on demand is included in the membership.
Michelle Missler [:But these weekly webinars, that's also additional money too.
Katie White [:Okay.
Michelle Missler [:But it's the same price, $50. So we've got like the service coordinator foundations, the kind of the brand new service coordinator. What do I need to know about this job? That's a bundle? I don't know the cost. Don't ask me. I do not look at that on a regular basis. But it's bundled so it's not as expensive as if you did each of those on demand courses.
Katie White [:So I love that because not only then do you know that you're like data collection, you can pull things nationally. But then obviously you know that there's this consistent rollout of training for service.
Michelle Missler [:Coordinators if everybody's operating in a different function. Right.
Katie White [:That's so Michelle Missler. I love it. Brilliant. What a. What I mean, I'm serious. That's obviously your leadership in doing that. That's really smart.
Michelle Missler [:But back to the system. I just have a couple things I wanted to add. So Ellen was talking a little bit about what service coordinators are documenting from a historical standpoint. So Ask Online is not owned by my. By the American association of Service Coordinators. The name was created in conjunction with the Pangea foundation that owns Ask Online. So they're the owner, they're the developer, they're the support team. Ask, my organization is a good partner.
Michelle Missler [:Right. We're super close partners. But it's often confused that that is my system. But we don't operate the system.
Katie White [:Okay.
Michelle Missler [:And so all of the support and everything comes from Ask Online, the Pangea Foundation. But that was developed in conjunction with ask back in 2007, I believe so back when I was in the service coordinator industry. So we're talking it's almost been 20 years of data collection and while some parts of it it's so user friendly, like Ellen was saying, it hasn't fully progressed. But that's also a really great thing. So the data has stayed consistent across the years. So we can really tell an incredible story of service coordinators. One of the things though that I encourage service coordinators to do. So if we go all the way back to the conversation about wellness programs and health and wellness programs, one of the things that I encourage service coordinators to do and something that we have helped create report wise is to understand a property and the population on a community level.
Michelle Missler [:Right. And so if I run a report, I can't think what the report is called at this point, but property wide Profile, that's what it's called. If you run that report, you can see how many of your residents have diabetes, how many have high blood pressure, you know how many of them have based on the assessments that service coordinators are required to do. So if you're working with a resident, you're required to do confidentiality, per hud, confidentiality agreement, a full on assessment, identify the needs and then you connect somebody to the resources. Right. And then you follow up and then you add that documentation. So through the assessment process, you would determine whether somebody has certain needs. So if you have a whole building that's food insecure, right.
Michelle Missler [:Or a percentage of your building, then that lets you know, hey, not only do they say they want this program, which is also important, but the data is telling me that there's a collective need, that I should then go out into the part, into the community and find a partner, food bank, food pantry, right. And bring them in to address that need. And so not only are they looking at working with individual residents one on one, but then service providers are looking at the same time as the collective group of residents. That can change over time as people pass away, new people move in, culture and needs change every, you know, probably few months. So they're constantly reassessing that and saying, who can I get a partnership with at Ask? My goal is to try and create national partnerships to take some of that burden off of them. So back to the, well, careful conversation we had earlier. So they're this phenomenal partner that want to come in and educate our residents on Medicare options. Right.
Michelle Missler [:So they have Medicare options that they educate folks on, but they don't come in and talk about that. They come in and do activities and then they bring in a broker who provides education on all of the different insurance programs. So it's not even them selling themselves. They're just there because they. From a mission centric perspective, this organization believes in providing the best support and care for older adults. And that's been wildly successful within communities.
Katie White [:And it takes a lot of work to vet out good partners and not good partners. So what a value add.
Michelle Missler [:Yeah, I'm trying to add that. In addition, I mean, we just had a really great conversation with Kroger and we're getting ready to. So we do do some free trainings and that's usually around community partners. So like Kroger is going to do, we call it a core connection where it's just like, hey, this is what Kroger's offering. They can come in and do flu shots they can do all of these different things to help your residents. And yeah, it's just, it's an incredible way to give back to the service coordinators because I know how hard the job is. It is so difficult to build relationships, make connections and then couple that with, not to get political, because it's not political, but it's just the reality. Couple that with funding that is lost within community.
Michelle Missler [:And how are we navigating that? How are we navigating the fact that there's not as much food, you know, the SNAP benefits are potentially going away. Or maybe our food pantry, maybe our Meals on Wheels program is struggling. Right. So then the service corner has to get even more creative to find those resources. Just like I know your case managers are having to do on a regular basis.
Katie White [:Ellen, are we assessing people every year or only upon move in?
Ellen Carey [:I would say probably as they reach out, in addition to move in as well. You know, some don't want our assistance even from the get go. So we do try to get like resident logs as far as res. Tenant logs as far as who lives there and try to reach out to them.
Michelle Missler [:So.
Katie White [:So you're updating as needed, but hopefully ongoingly that way you're continuing to see if the needs have been met, if there's different ME needs. But somebody doesn't have to, a resident doesn't have to participate.
Michelle Missler [:It's completely voluntary and there's a non participation form and everything that service coordinators are recommended to fill out if a resident doesn't want to. The other recommendation is, and I'm sure Ellen and her service coordinators, you know, you review the assessment every year or if marked changes occur. So that's usually the recommendation. So marked changes means you heard that this person went to the hospital over the weekend, now they're back. Well, you should probably go do another assessment because who knows what changed during that. Right. But unique thing about service coordination that is often misconstrued in the communities is that a service coordinator is kind of like at a assisted living environment or a nursing home where they know the comings and goings. But this is independent housing.
Michelle Missler [:Right. And so when we go back to people choose not to work with a service coordinator, that is absolutely okay. There is no requirement of that. Some of our residents still work, some of them are out in the community doing things day in and day out that they never even see the service coordinator who's only there for an eight hour block of time, if that much. We have some service coordinators who work one day a week. Because their property is so small and the funding's so small.
Katie White [:Yeah.
Michelle Missler [:So, yeah, service coordinators, you know, are assessing the residents usually once a year or trying to. Right. But it usually starts upon move in. But it could be upon a new service coordinator starting too, because usually that happens more than a brand new. Brand new resident's coming in. But then, yeah, if the mark change happens, is what we recommend is that they would continue to reassess based on those things. So.
Katie White [:And when I first met you, Ellen, it was in the middle of a crisis at the building you were servicing, coordinating at the time. And I was blown away at like, you're calm, you were in control and you knew everything about the residents. With Audi, I was like, where's the list? Like, you know, what do we need? And you're like, who are you talking about? And you knew like, what room they were, if they were on oxygen, if they were there, you had already checked in on them what their emergency plan was. Were they in a mobility. Did they need a mobility device? And so that's the other piece of a service coordination. Like, yes, it's about services and meeting needs and it's about being that social connection, being that person that the residents should. They want to have, that they can go to when they need something.
Ellen Carey [:Yeah, I was just at a building yesterday and in fact, a building that I did service coordination and thankfully they all like to see me coming back.
Katie White [:Oh, good. I don't doubt it.
Ellen Carey [:But they also always tell me how much they appreciate who has followed after me and that, you know, she has a very similar projection as far as her personality and her capability and her connection with them. So they all appreciate her. And then even my newest service coordinator in her buildings, you know, everybody's willing to come to her office and say.
Michelle Missler [:Hey, hi, you know, how you doing?
Ellen Carey [:I don't need anything right now. I just wanted to tell you I'm here and I'm okay. And you know, and so. And so she's new, you know, these. Most of my other service coordinators have been in the building, you know, for a good bit. So they're also very connected to the tenants. But, you know, you get that connection and that personal feel which you enjoy and kind of makes your day, that you get, you know, a cute little high and smile and so.
Katie White [:And residents know they have someone they can go to that they can rely on. In a world when a lot of the tangible services that we used to be able to connect people to are disintegrating or lessening, we are still an intervention. We are still in the building. We are still that backup intervention.
Ellen Carey [:We're still that ear.
Katie White [:Absolutely.
Michelle Missler [:And I would just add to that. The service coordinators are. Oh, I said in the very beginning that there is a relationship component. And that's when I go and meet people and I explain what service coordinators are. They are the relationship piece of these buildings, and without that relationship. And we saw this tenfold during COVID We learned Covid was one of the worst things we probably all collectively have gone through. But the lessons learned through any challenge. Right.
Michelle Missler [:There's lessons to be learned through all crises like that. But one of the things that I said from the very beginning and continue to say is that Service Corners had trained their entire life for this moment. Why? Because they're creative problem solvers. And so when Covid happened and all of the government, all the shutdowns happened. Right. And our residents were kind of left out of the conversation because everybody's thinking about the nursing home older adults. They're thinking about the assisted living older adults. Nobody's really thinking about those independent older adults living within community.
Michelle Missler [:Right, right. And so who's educating them on all of the health guidelines? Who's making sure that they understand what they can and can't do? Who's helping keep them safe? It was the service coordinators. That's who they tried.
Ellen Carey [:I was service coordinator during that time. It was. Yeah, it was a challenge. It was scary for them because I had to be in the building, whereas everybody else was doing six feet. So. Yeah. And so you see those things of people not managing some of your recommendations, and then you get concerned about Mary Smith over here, who's trying to go to the doctor with her mask on and all protected, and then Jane Doe over here, who's not protected, and saying hi. And so, yeah, it's.
Ellen Carey [:It's a lot of encouragement and, you know, trying to educate.
Michelle Missler [:Yeah. Trusted person. Right.
Ellen Carey [:For the betterment of the collection. Of the collection. Yeah.
Katie White [:Yeah. So as we wrap up and I'm thinking about, like, how do you capture the essence? Because you've both been service coordinators and obviously continue to work so passionately every day. Like, what is one final thing that you want people to know about? Service coordination?
Ellen Carey [:For me, it'd be the essence of the relationship building that Michelle talks about in a lot of ways. Because, you know, when you talk about relationship building and you have your support, you have your trust, you have your connection, you have your rapport building, you have all the things that many of the people in Some of the HUD buildings have, outside of that, service coordination, because whether they've burned some bridges in the community or whatnot. So it's really the essence of the relationship building because it involves the SNAP benefits, because it involves the healthcare piece, because it involves the financial piece. So for me, that's where it stands. You may have a different answer.
Katie White [:No, that's. Well said.
Michelle Missler [:That's a great answer. I would just add to that by saying, I mean, I echo everything Ellen said, but I. I would also add in that they're a partner. They are a partner for people who are also working within a community. So, you know, if I'm a case manager working at CLAA and I have a resident who I know lives in affordable housing, I want to know who that service coordinator is. You know, why it makes my job a lot easier. Absolutely. Because of that relationship, because of those boots on the ground.
Michelle Missler [:You know, those are the eyes and the ears of what's going on in that building. And so it's an extension of, and not a competitive program. It's an extension of aging services within a community. Right. And so I think that's the message that I want to make sure is very clear. We often talk about duplicative services when it comes to quote, unquote, service coordination, care coordination, case management. Right? Everybody's like, what's the difference? But the reality is that they are those boots on the ground in a way that no one else is. And that doesn't take away from the role that everybody else is doing.
Michelle Missler [:Right.
Katie White [:It adds to it.
Michelle Missler [:It adds to it. And so service corners aren't able to ensure that the funding is existing for a per a certain service. Or, you know, they can make a referral to get Meals on Wheels, but they're not the ones who's figuring all of that out. Right. That's somebody else within the community. They're just saying, raising their hand and saying, hey, there's an issue over here. I know we have these services. Can somebody help? Right? And then they pass that on and then the same thing back.
Michelle Missler [:Right? And so I just think it's really, really important that everyone is aware of buildings with service coordinators and makes a relationship, creates a relationship and vice versa. This is what I tell service coordinators all the time, too. Get to know the people who are serving the residents in your property. Those relationships are only going to make your life and your job easier. And relationships make everything easier. And I think that's just kind of my thoughts on all of it in the sense of how do we continue to improve this program? Right now we've got. There's not an official number because HUD doesn't track the official number. But we know that there's over 5,000 service coordinators, maybe even more across the nation.
Michelle Missler [:So we don't have every service coordinator as a member, which is fine. But what we do know is that there's at least another 2 to 3,000 buildings without a service coordinator.
Ellen Carey [:Right.
Michelle Missler [:That looks like the buildings with service coordinators. And that's because of a funding challenge. And we also know that there's a massive affordable housing challenge all over the nation. And we also know due to some really great work from an organization called Age Friendly Innovation Center. Innovation center, sorry, that 92%. What is the. What is the official number that we.
Katie White [:Touted when we say more than 90%?
Michelle Missler [:More than 90%. I think it was 92.
Katie White [:Okay.
Michelle Missler [:But they want to age within in community. Right. They want to age in place and they don't want to move on to a higher level of care. And this is the best option for that in the sense of if you're not aging within your own personal home, if you choose to, you know, downsize or move out of your family home or whatever that looks. Looks like aging within a community of affordable housing with other like, individuals, not only is it more cost effective, but it also helps save their independence and their autonomy and all of those things. And it helps financially to the government because the cost of a service coordinator in a position in a. In a program like that versus the cost of a person going to a nursing home under Medicaid, astronomically different. Astronomically different.
Michelle Missler [:Yeah.
Katie White [:What is asks isn't. Don't you have a catchphrase about like the heart of it or something? Service.
Michelle Missler [:The service coordinator. The heartbeats of housing.
Katie White [:The heartbeats of housing.
Ellen Carey [:Yeah.
Katie White [:I love that. I do. Because it's true. Right. It's an important role that I don't think gets enough credit yet. Without service coordinators, we would be so much worse.
Michelle Missler [:Yeah, I really need you to come to our conference.
Katie White [:Okay.
Michelle Missler [:She would love it there, wouldn't she?
Ellen Carey [:Yeah, she would.
Michelle Missler [:27'S in Indy.
Katie White [:Perfect. I'll see you in Indy.
Ellen Carey [:That's the one I went to was in Indy.
Michelle Missler [:Okay. You can just ride with.
Katie White [:Yeah, we'll ride together.
Michelle Missler [:But I think that.
Katie White [:Exactly what you want. Three hours with me.
Michelle Missler [:The energy of service coordinators there is mind blowing. I think it's something that.
Ellen Carey [:It was way overwhelming for someone like me. But.
Michelle Missler [:But these are very engaging for someone like her, right?
Ellen Carey [:Absolutely.
Michelle Missler [:That in the middle, like.
Ellen Carey [:I could tag along in your. Your coattails. Yes. I'm very good at following.
Katie White [:I'm up there being all crazy. Yes. Well, thank you both for your history of being service coordinators, for continuing to be passionate advocates and making sure that the issues are being raised not only for the service coordinators, but for the residents. And thank you, you so much for being here. I hope now you know something about service coordination.
