The Fairfax County government’s efforts protecting seniors from scams is about to enter the texting era.
As part of the Silver Shield anti-fraud effort of the Department of Family Services, a text-message service is being developed to provide timely but not overwhelming amounts of messages for those who sign up. The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors was briefed on the program at the June 2 meeting of its Older Adults Committee.
The goal is to roll out a program that will provide just enough information to be relative but “avoid text-message fatigue” by sending out too many messages, said Beth Ann Margetta, assistant program manager of the Fairfax Area Agency on Aging.
The concept is “fantastic,” Board Chairman Jeff McKay said, but it should be seen as just one option amid a broader group of offerings.
“If we have seniors who don’t do texting, what do we do to reach them?” he asked the staff.
The new texting effort was touted at the county’s Scam Jam festival hosted with AARP Virginia on April 30 at the Fairfax County Governmental Center.
That event focused on two of the fastest growing scams: romance-based investment schemes and cryptocurrency fraud. There also was a resource fair featuring representatives from federal, state and county agencies.
Despite efforts to provide seniors with information, scammers continue to proliferate, county officials acknowledged.
“It’s making my stomach turn that there are people who do so much to exploit our seniors,” Franconia District Supervisor Rodney Lusk said.
At the committee meeting, staff also detailed plans for an upcoming Community Assessment Survey of Older Adults. In Fairfax County, 22,000 households will receive a mailed survey this month, and any senior can go online, starting June 30, and complete one.
The survey, which will cost $91,000 to administer, “will help inform our work moving forward,” Margetta said.
McKay said he hoped the survey would manage to replicate countywide demographics of the senior community. If it did, the results would be helpful in “getting a real feel on what’s on our older adults’ minds,” he said.
Hunter Mill District Supervisor Walter Alcorn, who chairs the Older Adults Committee, said supervisors could help spread the word about the texting initiative, community survey and other efforts to protect and serve county seniors.
“Keep using your community channels [to] really simplify these initiatives,” he said.
The June 2 presentation was part of an update on the county’s SHAPE the Future of Aging initiative and its 2023-28 aging plan.
According to the county’s demographic data, Fairfax is home to about 343,000 residents aged 55 and older, about 27.5% of the total population. By 2050, the 55+ population is expected to grow to just under 400,000 residents, making up 29.1% of the total population.
Photo by Vitaly Gariev/Unsplash
