It is a pleasure to be here and add my welcome to this Senior’s Legal Rights Conference. I am pleased that so many of you could join us.
Today’s conference will cover legal topics relevant to the lives of seniors and their families. The key to handling many of these issues is planning, and this conference will promote a better understanding of the legal rights and needs of our older citizens. All of the professionals here today, the social workers, case managers, and health practitioners to name a few, serve vital roles in ensuring that the seniors of Baltimore County will be able to age with not only dignity, but with security and peace of mind. And I thank you for the important work that you do.
As people grow older, they and their families face a range of legal issues that did not have to be dealt with earlier in life. For some, aging will bring chronic illness, incapacity, and poverty. However, for most, aging will bring continued health and relative prosperity. But all seniors, as well as their caregivers, and families, need to be prepared to address needs that have significant legal implications. Housing needs, long-term-care needs, financial management issues, public benefit eligibility problems, insurance needs, quality of life needs, personal life preferences, and health care decision-making questions are so-called “non-legal” needs. But they are intimately enmeshed with the law.
Today’s seniors are not the seniors of thirty, twenty, or even ten years ago. Seniors are remaining active later and later into their lives. As a society, we are living longer, and as baby boomers reach retirement age in record numbers, many more of us will need help as we meet the challenge of getting older. In Baltimore County alone, we estimate that by 2010, our senior population will exceed 168,000, and by 2020 our senior population will be over 206,000.
When you leave here today, you will be better equipped to serve our growing senior population and their families. Today’s program includes sessions on health care decision-making rights, guardianship, end of life issues, and much, much more. I would like to thank Arnold Eppel and all his staff at the Department of Aging for their work in putting today’s conference together. They do outstanding work at the Department of Aging in coming up with dynamic programs and ideas to meet the needs of Baltimore County’s senior citizens, and today is just another example of that.
It is a real privilege for me to introduce today’s keynote speaker, The Honorable John F. Fader. Judge Fader served the people of Baltimore County on the bench for 26 years, first on the District Court and then on the Circuit Court. Judge Fader is a distinguished jurist whose years on the bench have enriched not only Baltimore County’s legal community, but the community as a whole. It is my honor to introduce today’s keynote speaker, my colleague and my friend: Judge John F. Fader.
Courthouse 