Berkshire Senior Online

Homepage -- Programs and Services -- Contact Information

Back home with the right job, right agency
Abuse of elders greatest for over 80 year olds, help is available
Senior Pharmacy Program not new, but improved
Income tax counseling offered to Seniors in Berkshire County
TTY users invited to call Elder Services

February 2000 Monthly News

Back home with the right job, right agency

By Robert P. Dean, Director of Client Services

I grew up in Berkshire County and attended public schools in North Adams. Like so many others from the area, I left to attend college and did not come back. After graduating from Northeastern University, and then Suffolk Law School, I remained in Boston to practice law for the next 10 years.

Something was missing. Gradually, I moved away from the full-time practice of law, first as a mediator, and then as a program assistant in an intermediate care facility providing direct dare to adults with profound developmental disabilities.

Every day, I helped individuals to make their lives a little better. My work mattered. Eventually, I became residential coordinator for a cluster of homes and apartments for individuals with mental retardation and mental health concerns. I supervised residential managers and their staff, and provided training in human rights, socialization and sexuality, and nonviolent physical crisis intervention.

Still, something was missing. Although I enjoyed my career in human services, my wife, Tanya, and I wanted to raise our young son, Ethan, in a community, not a large city. We wanted Ethan to know, to really know, his grandparents, and to learn from them.

We decided to come home if I could find the right job. I wanted a job with an agency that gives back to the community, and whose people help to make individuals’ lives a little better every day. I found that job with Elder Services. Our mission is to provide elders with the opportunity to live with dignity, independence, and self-determination and to achieve the highest possible quality of life. We provide supports that allow elders to live in their own homes for as long as possible. What a wonderful mandate. What better way to give to the community, than to give back to those who carried and supported that community for years, and who now need a little bit of assistance themselves?

I’ve found the right job, with the right agency. It’s good to be back.

Bob Dean has been Director of Client Services at Elder Services since late September 1999. He oversees the Home Care, Housing, Health Services, and Protective Services departments.