Justice in Aging

Who are the people you serve with your mission?

Through our trainings we lend our legal expertise on health care, economic security benefits, housing, and other public benefits to thousands of advocates, service providers, legal professionals, and others across the country so that they may better serve their older adult clients. In this way, we are furthering our mission to better the lives of low-income older adults by improving their access to justice. Through our advocacy programs we seek to change law and policies so that older adults from communities who have traditionally faced barriers (such as older adults who are people of color, women, LGBTQ, have disabilities, are immigrants, and/or are not English proficient) can access the services and supports they need to meet their basic needs.

How is your organization collecting feedback from the people you serve?

Electronic surveys (by email, tablet, etc.), Constituent (client or resident, etc.) advisory committees, other,

How is your organization using feedback from the people you serve?

To identify and remedy poor client service experiences, To identify bright spots and enhance positive service experiences, To make fundamental changes to our programs and/or operations, To inform the development of new programs/projects, To strengthen relationships with the people we serve, To understand people's needs and how we can help them achieve their goals,

What significant change resulted from feedback?

After hearing from partners through various coalitions, we learned about many problems their clients were having with the Social Security Administration reducing their clients' benefits unfairly. This was because SSA was counting federal and state COVID stimulus assistance as income, and therefore using it as a reason to reduce or even take away benefits entirely. So we decided to increase our trainings on this issue and offered strategies advocates could implement to fight for the rights of their clients. Because of the continued need for this kind of assistance we updated some of our older training materials on effective strategies to engage with agencies such as SSA. We believe this will not only help new attorneys, but also experienced attorneys looking for current information.

With whom is the organization sharing feedback?

Our staff, Our board, Our funders,

How has asking for feedback from the people you serve changed your relationship?

Asking for feedback from the people we serve has improved our relationship with them. It has helped us to engage them as more active participants in our trainings and the systemic advocacy we take on to fix issues that arise out of those trainings. We recently established an Equity Advisory Committee that is giving input in how we structure our advocacy programs which will inform decisions we are making about strategic use of our organizational reserves.

Which of the following feedback practices does your organization routinely carry out?

We collect feedback from the people we serve at least annually, We take steps to get feedback from marginalized or under-represented people, We aim to collect feedback from as many people we serve as possible, We take steps to ensure people feel comfortable being honest with us, We engage the people who provide feedback in looking for ways we can improve in response, We act on the feedback we receive,

What challenges does the organization face when collecting feedback?

The people we serve tell us they find data collection burdensome, It is difficult to find the ongoing funding to support feedback collection,