Emergency Meals on Wheels For Seniors Program Gets Funding

The Winter Park Health Foundation, through its Older Adults Work Group, has approved a $2,500 matching grant to help support the Seniors First award-winning Emergency Meals on Wheels program that provides immediate nutritional assistance and support to seniors in crisis.

This program offers home-delivered meals, case-management, and volunteer contact for older adults who may be returning home from a hospital or nursing facility, receiving hospice care, experiencing a sudden loss of a caregiver, or suffering from other high-risk conditions and need home-delivered meals immediately to aid in their recovery.

Clients benefitting from the emergency program are visited at home or in health care facilities and meal service is started within one to three days, as opposed to the federally funded Meals on Wheels program which requires extensive mandated assessments, paperwork, and data entry, that can delay service for a month or more. 

Through a collaborative agreement, the Winter Park Chamber of Commerce expects to contribute a minimum of $5,000 in support of this program.  The Edyth Bush Charitable Trust Foundation and WPHF have both agreed to provide a 50-cent per dollar match ($2,500 each), bringing the grant total to $10,000.  The program is expected to begin on September 1, 2009 and all dollars raised will be used to provide needy and eligible older adults residing in Winter Park with one or two emergency meals each weekday for up to 30 days, thereby improving their nutritional intake.