Meals on Wheels: Despite a decreased budget, county delivered meal program keeps rolling

• Tweet
• 

Jeanette Homan spends her Monday afternoons a little differently than most 83-year-olds.

The Mount Pleasant resident and her husband, Art, are delivery drivers for Isabella and Gratiot County’s Home Delivered Meals Program, managed by the Isabella County Commission on Aging.

Ginny Cain, director of the commission’s Gold Key Volunteer Program, said the Homans are two of more than 60 volunteer drivers for the Home Delivered Meals Program.

Homan said she was prompted to take a position as a delivery driver after she heard a radio announcement.

“We saw how needed our service was,” she said. “We just felt like we were contributing a very essential service and, who knows, we might need it ourselves one day.”

The program works to provide nutritionally balanced meals to home-bound residents of Mount Pleasant and Isabella County ages 60 and older, said Nutrition Program Director Caramel Slebodnik.

Slebodnik said the home delivered meals program has an operating budget of $246,118 in Isabella County, a decrease from last year’s budget of $258,678. The meals program is funded by several different sources, including the state and county, millages, funds from the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe and donations.

Slebodnik said the decreased budget is a result of losing state funding and donations from meal recipients.

To cope with the decreasing budget in the past, the program avoided purchasing high priced food items and has worked to cut employee hours.

Come get your meal

Drivers spread out at noon each day.

Homan said she and her husband have been delivering meals for about eight years. When they first began, the Homans delivered about 27 or 28 meals every Monday.
Since then, the two have switched to a different part of Mount Pleasant, and now deliver about 12 meals every Monday.

Homan’s 12 patrons are just a few of the 438 home-bound seniors who utilize the meals program.

Slebodnik said the baby boomer generation is aging, meaning there is a foreseeable increased demand for home-delivered meals. This increase could cause a potential problem for the program’s dwindling budget.

Slebodnik said the worst outcome would be a decreased amount of meals available for those who need them.

“If there was money for the demand, it wouldn’t be an issue,” she said.

Brenda Upton, executive director of the County Commission on Aging, said the meal recipients were split evenly between Isabella and Gratiot counties.

Slebodnik said each meal contains a protein source, in addition to a vegetable dish, a fruit dish, bread and milk.

“Some of the clients that we deliver meals to are home bound and very isolated,” Cain said. “We’re filling a very basic need — a nutritious meal.”

Cain said many of the families of the meal recipients count on the delivery drivers to check on the safety of their loved ones.

This is one of the reasons, Slebodnik said, the meals program is valuable.
“It’s so important to so many people … the person receiving the meal and their family members,” she said.