C.O.P.S Care program encourages independence within senior community

CLAWSON — Clawson police officer Aundreana Beydoun was taught growing up to always respect the elderly.

When she noticed an influx of welfare-check calls for seniors called into the Clawson Police Department, she wanted to create a program that would provide more efficient help to the senior community.

Last spring, Beydoun began creating the Clawson Officers Protecting Seniors Care program to help encourage the independence and safety of seniors living in their homes. The program seeks to accomplish this through check-ins, resources and social opportunities.

“We (Clawson)  have a high population of elderly people. People come here and they stay here,” Beydoun said. “While I was responding to calls, I noticed a lot of them were for the elderly or vulnerable adults that had financial hardships, physical disabilities or different medical conditions and not having any family in the area.”

Beydoun said that she conducted research on her own as well as through the Clawson Senior Center to launch the program and provide all the necessary services that seniors potentially need to lead an independent life.

Lisa Ball, Clawson’s assistant director of recreation and senior services, said that she is very pleased with the creation of this program. She often gets calls from worried family members or friends looking for a program like C.O.P.S Care.

“This type of program is really vital to do these check-ins with older adults to just to make sure that they’re OK when it comes to home safety and to ensure, you know, just to support their mental well-being and socialization,” Ball said.

C.O.P.S Care is a voluntary check-in and referral program. Seniors who wish to be enrolled or people who know of a senior to refer must fill out an application and send it to the Clawson Police Department.

Beydoun is in charge of the program, so when the applications are sent in, she will review them herself and then reach out and set up a time to meet with the senior to go over a list of survey questions and gather more information.

The survey includes questions regarding home security, medical conditions, medications, pets, emergency contacts and more that can be beneficial to the officers who respond to the location.

“Everything with our program is voluntary, so they’re advised of that upfront, but a lot of the information is very beneficial to us,” Beydoun said. “So, if we do respond to their address for a medical emergency or some kind of crisis or anything like that, we have that information in a secured database that officers can pull up, and we can more effectively help them when the time matters.”

The seniors can choose to have weekly calls over the phone or have biweekly or monthly in-person checks to their home. During the initial interview process, seniors will work with the officers to choose a schedule that works best for them in terms of calls or in-person visits.

Participants are informed during the interview that if they do not respond to one of the scheduled checks, the officers will respond to their home like a welfare check, according to Beydoun.

“That doesn’t mean we’re going to go busting down any doors. It just means we’re going to go to their house and try to make contact to make sure that they’re OK,” she said. “If we’re looking through the window and see that they are on the ground and they don’t look like they’re doing very well, then at that point we will do what we have to do as police to get them the assistance that they need.”

During the scheduled calls or check-ins, the officers will ask general questions to see if the senior needs anything or wants more information on any social activities.

Beydoun hopes that through the C.O.P.S Care program, the Clawson Police Department can begin to build a relationship of trust with the senior citizen community.

“With our program, the goal is to try to prevent emergencies and to rebuild that trust, and to kind of educate them as well, because a lot of times too we go to their houses for things like identity theft, fraud, you know, scams, things like that,” Beydoun said.

Through the C.O.P.S Care program, Beydoun hopes to mend the divide of trust between seniors and first responders, while giving them a sense of security and comfort while they continue to live in their homes.

“This is a huge passion of mine, this program. And  I hope we can get more eyes on it and more exposure so that we have more participants,” Beydoun said. “The seniors are a very important part of my life. I’ve always been raised to respect your elders. So that’s kind of how everything started.”

Enroll or refer a senior to the C.O.P.S Care program by contacting officer Aundreana Beydoun at the Clawson Police Department at aallen@cityofclawson.com or call (248) 435-5000.