The past few years have been anything but kind to Debra Litton. First, the 57-year-old lost her full-time job. Then the three factory jobs that she was placed into by a temp agency didn't work out. Searching for an alternative, she came across a job listing from the National Council on Aging (NCOA) advertising a Senior Community Service Employment Program (SCSEP) in Dickson, Tennessee.



Three days after her application was accepted, Litton's husband filed for divorce and asked her to leave.

Depressed and left with little choice, Litton moved back in with her parents – Ken, 82, and Willen, 77.

“If it wasn’t for my parents, I would’ve been homeless,” Litton said. "I thought to myself ‘Oh my God, I’m 56-years-old and I’m back living with my mommy and daddy and I am depending on them like a little child.’"

Litton's situation is hardly unique among SCSEP applicants, who are 55 and older and part of a demographic that is either aging out or being pushed out of the traditional workforce.

Since the economic crisis of 2008, organizations like NCOA and Senior Services America (SSA) have seen an increase in people interested in job training and job placement programs, especially in the 55-64-year-old age bracket. However, programs such as SCSEP, which was authorized by the Older Americans Act in 1973, have been slashed by Congressional budget cuts. The Older Americans Act expired in September 2012 and has yet to be reauthorized by US congress.

“The truth of the matter is, in virtually every state in this country, seniors who depend on the Older Americans Act programs are on waiting lists,” Vermont senator Bernie Sanders told the Guardian. “Many seniors who would like to get a job, go through the job training programs and serve their communities are unable to do so because funding has been cut and because the need has grown.”

Reauthorization of Older American Act, which Sanders is pushing for, would formally authorize SCSEP from 2014 through 2018. Although the program continues despite the expired legislation, the Congressional Budget Office suggested last November that it be cut.

At 5.1%, the unemployment rate for those 55 and older is down from 7.2%, its 2009 peak, but things are far from being back to the way they were pre-Great Recession. Currently, about 1.7 million people 55 and older are unemployed and looking for work.

SCSEP, an employment program for workers 55 and older, is one of the Johnson-era programs that is supposed to just fix that. Initially funded by the Department of Labor in 1967 as part of the War on Poverty, the program was revitalized during the Great Recession.



“Most people need to work. They usually come to us very discouraged. They feel they are too old to look for jobs, “ said Timothy Hamre, operations director of SCSEP at NCOA. “In some cases, they haven’t been working and have been pounding the pavement, only to have a lot of doors closed on them and their applications rejected.”

For those who have found jobs after being laid off, their earnings are likely to be 14% to 19% lower over the next decade, the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College found. Their financial assets took a beating and are likely 22% to 33% lower than before they were let go. What’s more, these people are 8% more likely to experience another layoff.

SCSEP is the last vestige of government providing jobs for unemployed, said Tony Sarmiento, executive director at SSA.



In order to qualify for the program, applicants must be unemployed and their combined family income must be less than 125% of poverty level; that means a single person must make less than $14,000 a year. The people SCSEP accepts are placed with a non-profit organization, where they work for maximum of 20 hours a week, at minimum wage.



SCSEP participants can be placed at child care centers, schools, libraries, or faith-based organizations, where they learn on the job.

“Depending on the assignment or the placement, the participants learn the skills required,” Sarmiento said. So, he said, someone placed at a childcare center might develop a different skill-set than someone placed at a library, for example.

Around 75% of SCSEP’s expenditures goes to wages and minimal benefits that include workers’ compensation for the participants. The law, however, prohibits coverage of benefits such as pension, sick leave, and retirement system or plan contributions.

It's not a lot, but for many it's better than nothing, especially as poverty yawns before many boomers who lack the options and the savings to see themselves into a comfortable retirement.



The program's profile reveals the extent of the economic pain aging baby boomers face: Over 42% of SCSEP participants are either homeless or at risk of homelessness, Sarmiento said.



"At risk of homelessness" – a category that includes 28,000 of the program's 70,000 participants - can mean that within the past 12 months, participants have unpaid rent or mortgage, had to borrow money to make these payments, had to temporarily move in with family or friends or have stayed at a homeless shelter.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Training boomers and the elderly on computers. Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images



Depression and feelings of despair are common among SCSEP participants who find themselves locked out of jobs they once easily found. Thus, a partial role of the program is to rebuild the participants' self-esteem. The emotional support offered through the program was crucial for Litton, who said “the staff was very friendly and patient, even though I was depressed at the time.”

One of the ways the program boosts workers' self-esteem is by teaching them to apply for jobs on a computer, a skill many never mastered and one that can open some previously-closed doors.

To help older workers overcome their fear of the internet, SSA designed a program where computer-literate participants help those less savvy. According to Sarmiento, the program has helped over 25,000 participants nationwide.



Litton, who said she had been out of an office environment for over six years, focused on re-learning Windows, and programs like Excel and PowerPoint. She was later offered SCSEP placement as a receptionist trainee at the local NCOA office.



“You can’t make money teaching elderly computer skills. They take too long,” Sarmiento said. While there are many programs designed to teach young students about the internet, for older generations, as morbid as it sounds, “they think ‘Well, they are going to die anyway,’” Sarmiento said.

Unemployment line on October 28, 2008 in New York City. Photograph: Mario Tama/Getty



“We want people to leave us for a job,” he said, acknowledging that that is not always the case. Out of 1,124 participants who left the NCOA program for other reasons than unsubsidized employment: 258 (23%) left because they reached the 48-month limit and could no longer participate and another 29 participants left because they no longer met the income requirements.

For SSA, the numbers are similar. The organization, which trained 7,453 people between July 2012 and June 2013, found that 737 left for an unsubsidized job, while 278 reached the 48-month limit. According to the organization’s data, over 28% of those who left the program for reasons other than employment were no longer able to participate for reasons such as having to take care of a family member, being sick, being institutionalized or, in some cases, dying. Even with high turnover, SCSEP programs have had to turn some applicants away due to the cuts in federal funding. This past year NCOA has seen its SCSEP budget slashed by 5% due to congressional sequestration. The year before that, the budget underwent a 25% cut. Same happened to SSA’s budget, said Sarmiento. While the appropriations for the program overall were increased in the years after the crisis, reaching $825.4m in 2010, the funding in the most recent years has been cut down to

Even with high turnover, SCSEP programs have had to turn some applicants away due to the cuts in federal funding. This past year NCOA has seen its SCSEP budget slashed by 5% due to congressional sequestration. The year before that, the budget underwent a 25% cut. Same happened to SSA’s budget, said Sarmiento. While the appropriations for the program overall were increased in the years after the crisis, reaching $825.4m in 2010, the funding in the most recent years has been cut down to $450m for 2012 and to $425m post sequester “There are many people who want to get into the program, but there’s no money to let them in,” Hamre said. “Staff gets stretched thin. We didn’t have to lay off people, but positions don’t get filled.” Due to the cuts in funding, fewer people are helped by programs like SCSEP, Hamre said. From July 2010 to June 2011, NCOA served 6,310 people. The next year, after the congressional cuts, the program worked with just 4,438 participants. For SCSEP nationwide, only 77,331 participants were in the program compared to 106,071 elderly workers the year before. The decrease in numbers of people helped is just the most obvious effects of cutting back the program's budget, Sarmiento said. Workers are also seeing their hours and pay reduced.

“What you don’t see is that the schedule is cut back for those who are in the program, from 20-15 hours, which translates to fewer hours of service" – and smaller weekly pay for the participants, Sarmiento said. Litton said she worked 15 hours a week instead of 20 hours, which is the maximum numbers of hours SCSEP participants are allowed to work per week. “So long as right-wing Republicans control the House of Representatives, every program you care about will be in danger,” Sanders said in December at an event hosted by the AARP Foundation and SSA. According to Employment & Training Reporter, he pointed to congress’s inability to extend benefits to the long-term unemployed to make his point. It seems, however, that SCSEP will remain safe for another year. In its recent budget proposal, the House and Senate Appropriations Committees included a 2.3% increase for SCSEP starting July 2014. The increase doesn’t fully restore the cuts suffered by the program in the past year as the sequester came into effect, but the continued funding means that SCSEP will live for another year and will continue to help people like Litton. At the end of December, Litton landed a job in the department of commerce and insurance in Tennessee, helping process permit applications submitted to its fire prevention division. “I don’t think I will ever quit working," she said. "They will have to carry me out on stretchers. I love having a job to go to everyday." “I want to be able to take care of myself. I don't ever want to rely on anyone else again." “I want to be able to take care of myself. I don't ever want to rely on anyone else again."

So far, SCSEP claims impressive numbers in placing older workers – although the program also contends with significant attrition.Nationwide, from July 2012 to June 2013, more than 9,000 participants left SCSEP for other full-time and part-time jobs. The department of labor refers to this as “unsubsidized employment". NCOA, which served nearly 4,500 people through SCSEP that year, saw 644 participants leave for such jobs. About 74% of them still had a job six months after leaving the program. According to Hamre, almost 50% of participants leave the program each year.