Cherry Hill has closed its Strive after 55 survey, which aims to provide the township with information on its senior population.
The survey opened on Feb. 12 and included questions ranging from where seniors live, their financial situations, how they get around town, where they get information about the township, if they use senior services and who they can call if there’s a medical emergency.
Recreation department director Megan Brown said survey answers will help the township better tailor its services for seniors.
“There were a lot of questions about how do you access information about the township and the services that we offer,” Brown explained. “So that will help us better inform how we share information. And like we think we’re doing a great job with our website and things, but are we really?
“This survey will help us understand that.”
Twenty-six percent of township residents are over 60 years old. While 18 Stones Strategy was hired to conduct the survey, Cherry Hill still had input on its final choice of questions. According to Brown, the company hosted focus groups and consulted with the township before the survey went live.
“They held one-on-one sessions and small focus groups to understand the picture of the community, and then that helped inform the questions that they asked,” Brown said. “Then we sat down internally as a group with the 18 Stones people and ran through the questions before the survey went live, and made sure we felt like they were all encompassing with what information we wanted to improve on.”
The survey cost of $70,000 was paid for through the New Jersey Department of Human Services (NJDHS) Age-Friendly Grants Program, which awarded Cherry Hill and 37 other townships, boroughs, counties and organizations with funds to help promote “age-friendly planning and action.”
Another grant provides $100,000 for initiatives that align with World Health Organization or AARP program models and supports projects that align with the NJDHS’ age-friendly blueprint, which includes 59 recommendations for how to make the state “aging ready.”
Brown noted that when the township gets the survey results, they will be used to tailor its focus on seniors.
“It will become a planning tool for us,” Brown noted. “Help us take those responses and see where are we actually doing a good job and where can we be doing a better job, and what can we be doing differently to meet our senior needs.”
Mayor Dave Fleisher, Brown noted, has been engaging more with the senior community, and the grant money for the survey is part of that push.
” … A lot of times, it’s easy for communities to focus on youth and schools and things like that,” Brown pointed out. “And we have a fairly large senior population in Cherry Hill. And so it was really important to the mayor that we be focusing on our seniors.”
A few of Fleisher’s weekly messages have advertised the senior survey. Township staffers helped seniors fill out the survey at community events, and provided phone numbers, social media links and a senior email list.
“People were excited that we were doing it,” Brown said, “looking forward to … hearing the results of the survey. Those kinds of things.”
Brown said it is still unknown when results of the survey will be available or how many seniors responded.
