We express urgent concerns about the loss of legacy knowledge, expertise and access to services resulting from yesterday’s significant termination of Administration for Community Living (ACL) staff and dissolution of offices critical to older Americans.

Our organizations collectively represent thousands of community-based organizations that provide daily life-sustaining services to millions of older adults in nearly every urban, suburban and rural community across America. These services include nutritious meals, social connection and safety and well-being checks provided in homes and senior centers that enable older adults to live healthier in their own homes and communities, as opposed to spending their days in costly emergency rooms, hospitals and nursing homes. 

As part of the ongoing restructuring of HHS, many long-standing, experienced staff who fulfilled functions central to serving older adults through the Older Americans Act (OAA) were terminated. These essential functions include disbursement of funding, issuing payments for services delivered and collecting and reporting data on people served and services provided. We are extremely worried about the impact this workforce reduction and dismantling of key functions will have on seniors and the vital programs that serve them.

The troubling question remains: How can the loss of such institutional knowledge and expertise possibly be filled in short order to assure that vulnerable older adults do not suffer any interruption or termination of the key OAA programs and services on which they rely? Our organizations have not had an opportunity to weigh in or advise on how such planned changes might adversely impact the extraordinarily vulnerable populations we serve. We urge Secretary Kennedy to reconsider these sweeping changes or, at a minimum, to provide assurances that the needs of seniors — the fastest growing segment of our population — are prioritized.