Community Partnerships for Older Adults: A Case Study

Over the past several decades, federal policy has made states and communities increasingly more responsible for providing long-term care for older adults. The Community Partnerships for Older Adults, a national program of The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, saw this as an opportunity to explore new, sustainable ways to meet current and future needs for community-based longterm care. This initiative focuses on collaborative organizational partnerships, a distinctive philosophy of teaching and learning through the exchange of experience between communities, and program learning focusing on known factors promoting organizational sustainability. Using principles that emphasize the development of social capital and collective efficacy, the authors present a case study of the early experiences of this initiative to address the challenges inherent in meeting the growing supportive service needs of older adults. The implications of this multisite community intervention for social work education and practice in aging are discussed.