CASSOPOLIS — Suzanne Beurmann has been Cass County Council on Aging respite care director for 12 years.

Her responsibilities include the COA’s adult day center, as well as in-home respite care. Such programs help people remain in their homes.

Beurmann, who spoke to Dowagiac Rotary Club Thursday noon at Elks Lodge 889 as the guest of COA Executive Director Bob Cochrane, shares a care services business card with Assistant Executive Director Adrienne Glover, home care director, and case manager Dora “Penny” Moore, who works with Medicare and is very busy during Oct. 15-Dec. 7 enrollment.

“I deal more with people who might have memory problems,” said Beurmann, a certified dementia trainer as well as a registered nurse (RN).

Many people misunderstand adult day services and think of it as a nursing home within the COA.

“I hate to compare it to a children’s day care because it’s a dignity issue, but that’s what it’s like,” Beurmann said. “Cass County Transit goes out with an aide from the COA and picks up the person. Ninety-nine percent of them have short-term memory problems, some diagnosed with dementia. Alzheimer’s is a type of dementia. They come back to the Council on Aging. We’re in our own part, a locked unit that looks like a big apartment. They have breakfast. They do different activities that they can do. They’re never forced to do anything that they don’t like. We don’t watch TV. There are dogs in there. They have lunch, snack and they go back home. We have field trips. It’s kind of a different world from the rest of the COA. It’s not considered skilled care. There is a charge based on income, but it might be 50 cents an hour. Otherwise, we use grants or millage money to make up the difference. We have one aide for every three clients who come to the day center.”

Beurmann talked about EARS of Kalamazoo, the two-way “voice of help” communication system connecting an individual or their family member with an emergency response center with trained medical dispatchers to send assistance within seconds.

“The COA can give you a discount,” she said. “We can do it for $20 a month.”

Call 1-800-348-3277 and mention the Council on Aging.

EARS stands for Emergency Ambulance Response Systems Inc. and provides personal emergency response medical alarms to elderly, disabled and at-risk individuals. It consists of three components — a small transmitter (a help button carried or worn as a pendant by the user), a base unit connected to the user’s telephone and the emergency response center that monitors calls.

Installation is comparable to a telephone answering machine.

Beurmann distributed copies of the COA paper The Messenger and highlighted some other services — Meals on Wheels, in-home care (bathing, dressing, grooming, cooking, light house cleaning chores, running errands, nutrition and prescription assistance and senior safety), medical transportation outside the county so as to not compete with Cass County Transit, case management and a caregivers’ support group which meets the last Wednesday of each month from 1 to 3 p.m.

The COA, 60525 Decatur Road, Cassopolis, also offers support groups for cancer, low vision, multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease.