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CO-AGE Issues for the 2024 Legislative Session
CO-AGE is a vehicle for bringing broad-based input on aging issues from across the state to the attention of the General Assembly. Every July, CO-AGE members vote to prioritize issues to bring to Georgia’s elected officials. Here are the issues that were voted on for the 2024 Legislative Session.
Budget Priority
Perennial Issue: Funding for Home and Community Based Services
Home and Community Based Services provide support for older Georgians to remain at home as long as possible by providing home modifications, personal assistance, meals, transportation, and other services. These services cost far less than staying at a nursing home and can help seniors stay independent longer. For the 2024 legislative session, CO-AGE is requesting $10 Million in funding for HCBS.
Update the Georgia Code for Multidisciplinary Teams for Adult Abuse, Neglect & Exploitation
In 2018, legislation was passed to create another tool in the toolbox to combat elder abuse by allowing judicial districts in Georgia to create multidisciplinary teams to help address elder abuse and in the districts that have set up these teams, it has been a very effective tool. However, these teams are not mandatory so there is not a uniform response around the state to adult abuse exploitation and neglect.
Updating the Adult Abuse Neglect & Exploitation Multidisciplinary Team Establishment Law would require all judicial districts to create multidisciplinary teams for coordination of local resources and response for adult abuse, neglect and exploitation.
Legislative Priorities
Medical Aid in Dying (MAID)
Many older adults receive terminal diagnoses that presage a long, painful, and expensive process before death ensues. This impacts not just the individual but also their families, who suffer in agonizing powerlessness as they watch and care for their loved family member as he/she succumbs slowly and painfully to an ultimate and inevitable death.
A MAID law would allow older Georgians to know that they can choose, if they so wish, a path that would enable them to die with dignity and save their families from a lengthy, painful, and expensive process.