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Q&A

Brewer asks about memory loss and recertification challenges

New York City Council · Sep 18, 2026 · starts 1:48:15 · 1 min 57 sec

Brewer raises concerns about older adults forgetting to re-register for SCRIE due to memory loss and asks for solutions, and Shear describes pre-populated forms, multiple reminders, and reasonable accommodations designed for people with memory loss, with Brewer urging further conversation on the issue.

Gale A. Brewer

One more question quickly for Dree or Scree, which is we find a lot of people get older, they're forgetful, and they forgot to re-register, and they forget about Scree, and so on and so forth.

Gale A. Brewer

This is an increasing problem.

Gale A. Brewer

So how are you going to deal with that?

Gale A. Brewer

In other words, say, for instance, we do the outreach, and we're getting more people to sign up and so on, but they do forget.

Gale A. Brewer

So is there something we can do that's more pre-populated?

Gale A. Brewer

It could be like I'm making more than one year.

Gale A. Brewer

I don't know.

Gale A. Brewer

I'm asking because increasingly you're going to get this memory loss, you're going to get people are not doing the right paperwork, etc.

Gale A. Brewer

And then you have got the owner involved, you got the re-woman involved, you got the legal official involved, you got finance involved.

Gale A. Brewer

It's a whole thing that goes on.

Gale A. Brewer

And I don't know how we can avoid.

Gale A. Brewer

So I'm looking for suggestions from you and maybe from DIFTA.

Gale A. Brewer

I don't know.

Jeffrey Shear

Yes, so we do some pre-population in our forms to help people.

Jeffrey Shear

And I mentioned earlier that we do quite a few reminders.

Jeffrey Shear

I'm sure we can look into that and come up with other thoughts as well.

Gale A. Brewer

Okay, I mean, that's where we're getting challenges.

Gale A. Brewer

So people are...

Gale A. Brewer

Forgot that they even needed to do.

Gale A. Brewer

I assume that also happens in DRI for whatever medical challenge they're facing.

Gale A. Brewer

I do think we need to look at it.

Gale A. Brewer

You've got this huge number of more people getting older, and we need to think about this.

Jeffrey Shear

We will.

Jeffrey Shear

I also do want to reference back to the discussion about the reasonable accommodations that we supply specifically to...

Jeffrey Shear

People in the programs, maybe older people with memory losses.

Jeffrey Shear

So that is set up precisely to assist those people.

Gale A. Brewer

Okay, I think more conversation along that line.

Gale A. Brewer

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Susan Zhuang

Thank you.