NEW HANOVER COUNTY — After Barbara Watson had her heart attack more than 10 years ago, she lost her sense of purpose. Unable and scared to drive, especially after having suffered some neurological damage after the incident, she spent most of her time alone at home, waiting for her husband to wake up or get off of work. The Senior Community Service Employment Program, or SCSEP, changed all that for her.
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“I can live life again after sitting home and doing nothing for 10 years. It really gave me a great start in life again,” Watson said.
Through SCSEP, she pursued clerical work and volunteered to feed kids on weekends with the United Way of Onslow County.
However, Watson was furloughed in July, along with 46 other workers in the Cape Fear program.
Though organizations haven’t been given an official reason, the Senior Community Service Employment Program was one of many groups to be placed under review by the federal government following the DEI executive orders that passed earlier this year. The government shutdown, now, has created further obstacles and concerns.
Federally funded and nationally run, the SCSEP offers job training to low-income seniors aged 55 and up, who fall within the 125% federal poverty line. They are paid to work in government or nonprofit positions, with the U.S. Department of Labor funding around 19 to 20 national partner agencies to help run SCSEP. One is CWI Works — a nonprofit that trains and places senior-aged job seekers — which distributes funding to United Way of the Cape Fear Area to run the Senior Community Service Employment Program for New Hanover, Pender, Brunswick, Onslow, and Columbus counties, as it has since 1977.
In the past, the Department of Labor would announce grantees every spring to start the program on July 1; in January 2024, states were approved for a four-year plan with regards to SCSEP. With approval for four-years, pre-approved grantees are automatically guaranteed the money, though they still have to submit an annual budget proposal and program summary. United Way expected no issues to continue forward and according to Director Steve Moore in the last 60 years since the program began, there had been no major hiccups with funding distribution. When the start date for the 2025-2026 program came around, the money was nowhere to be found.
Moore said Congress authorized the funds in March.
United Way, last year, received around $570,000 for the senior program and matched it with $80,000 of its own funds. Three-quarters of the money goes to senior employee wages. Moore said the agency was expecting roughly the same amount to come in this year, but they were notified by CWI Works the money had been put on hold “due to some unspecified review.”
They still have not received a reason, Moore indicated.
“It’s been difficult for all of them because there’s just been so much uncertainty,” Moore said about the seniors dependent on the program for local jobs. “A lot of seniors, in general, they’re often socially isolated. And for a lot of our participants in CSEP, it’s a benefit not only for their job training or experience, but it’s being able to be around other people, socializing. A lot of our clients live alone.”
According to a list published by the New York Times, the SCSEP is one of the 2,600 programs under review by President Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order to remove Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives from federally funded programs.
With the loss of $46 million it expected to receive, CWI Works will have to “rebuild,” according to CEO Gary Officer. Not to mention, three months have passed for the usual program run time, meaning CWI will have to restructure the senior program to comply with executive orders and make up for lost time.
“We have to renew the hope that the program can help people get back into the workforce, get the training they need, and then at the same time try to make sure that the program is functioning in alignment with the president’s executive orders,” Officer said.
Officer noted that some seniors have moved on from the program.
“Several of them have had to give up their housing or lost their house,” he said. “The program has been disrupted at a scale that we’ve never experienced before.”
Watson, unable to find a job that works for her since being furloughed, had goals to help her husband fix their roof by using her check for loan repayments.
“All I need to do is give my husband one paycheck a month,” she said. “I would get two SCSEP checks a month, so all I would’ve had to do is give him one of those checks and my roof would be paid off in a year. Instead, now it’s landing on him to pay that off.”
Moore said it was safe to say all of the seniors affected have been struggling since the furlough, as 89% make $15,650 or less and 80% have taken Supplemental Security Income, food stamp benefits, low-income energy assistance or Medicaid. He said one Wilmington resident had his phone service cut off and reported some are unable to make rent or pay their mortgage.
“I’ve written letters for a number of participants who are having to, for example, request mortgage modifications because they can’t pay their mortgage,” said Moore.
After the furlough, because of the funding freeze, nonprofit Democracy Forward, along with four seniors who were impacted, filed a class action lawsuit out of Massachusetts against the Department of Labor, Office of Management and Budget, and the Employment and Training Administration, on behalf of all affected employees.
With recent developments, however, it is unclear whether or not the class action will continue to be pursued.
At the end of September, the Department of Labor released the Training and Employment Guidance letter, essentially an application for funding, for grantees to fill out again. Officer said the letter has remained largely unchanged from the previous form completed for funding under the SCSEP, but he said he was unsure of the program’s new timeline for disbursement. Nor is he sure what the budget would look like, given that the program has been inadvertently shortened by three months due to the delay.
In addition, organizations now have the government shutdown to worry about. Since Oct. 1, all federal spending has been suspended until Congress can agree on a budget.
“The longer the shutdown, the longer the delay,” Officer said.
The people in the Department of Labor and the Office of Management and Budget who approve the new proposals following the reviews, aren’t present, nor are they currently able to release the funds.
Watson said she has been reaching out to local politicians and government officials to try and get the funds released to start the program again.
“The broader workforce system does not pay much attention to older workers. Our society is not age friendly,” Officer said. “The only program within our nation’s workforce system that is specifically geared towards this particular demographic is CSEP.”
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