Deliveries for elderly may have to be cut back

Hundreds of elderly people in Pima County rely on home-delivered meals and also look forward to a caring face at their door at least once a week.

But rising gas and food prices may cause the Pima Council on Aging to make cuts to its nutrition programs and other services it provides.

“The cost of gas and cost of food are beginning to play havoc on our budgets,” council deputy director Debra Adams said last week.

The council serves as the county’s elderly advocacy agency and uses its federal and local funding to support meal programs, working with Catholic Social Services, The Salvation Army, the Tucson Urban League and Tucson’s Parks & Recreation Department, Adams said.

Together, those agencies provide more than 350,000 meals a year to elderly people in Pima County through home-delivered and family-style meal settings. The service is free for people who qualify, but a $2 contribution for each meal is asked.

Over the past two years, the cost of food has gone up 12.6 percent. All the food is prepared at Catholic Social Services kitchens by Valley Services, a Mississippi-based food service company.

The council faces a 47 cents per meal increase, which will put the nutrition programs $129,500 over budget if the council continues the range of services it now provides, said Linda Hutchings, program director of nutrition services for Catholic Social Services.

“We’re still in a tailspin about that,” Hutchings said. It anticipated only a 9 cent increase per meal.

Adams said the council has several options for saving money. They include not accepting new people into the program and creating a waiting list, slashing the number of days food is delivered and reducing the number of people receiving food.

She said cutting people from the program would be the last resort and would happen only if the budget were in dire circumstances. She said a decision on how to balance the budget will be made before the end of the summer.

Every day, 1,000 frozen meals are delivered to homes in the council’s vans, and 350 hot meals are driven to social meal sites to be served to clients 60 and older, Hutchings said.

The nutrition programs are being hit with a double whammy as gas prices also continue to rise.

The vans travel about 18,000 miles a month, Hutchings said.

She said she did a budget in May based then on gas costing $3.38 a gallon. If gas had stayed at $3.38, it would cost the council $49,100 to fuel its vans this year. But gas is now up to about $3.80 a gallon. If prices rise to $5 a gallon, as some economists have predicted, the council would spend more than $71,500 for fuel in a year.

“We are at the breaking point,” Hutchings said. “Something has to go.”

Serving fewer people meals or making fewer trips to clients’ homes to save on gas puts the council on the horns of a dilemma. Most clients have meals delivered at least twice a week. And while serving meals is the mission, there is an added benefit for some clients in that their meal delivery is often the only contact they have with other people. Adams said the meal deliverers serve as an important safety net for the clients.

For example, Mary Hicks, 82, lives alone with her two parakeets at a recreational vehicle park on West Limberlost Drive. She has been receiving five home-delivered meals a week through Catholic Social Services for the past year.

After a lifetime of cooking for the 11 children she raised, and at restaurants across Alaska and Washington, Hicks said she is glad to take a break and just enjoy food.

“After I quit cooking, I don’t want to cook no more,” Hicks said. “I’ve had a lot of experience with food.”

Hicks decided to use the meal delivery program at her doctor’s recommendation.

“It’s been a lot of help to me really,” Hicks said.

A vital part of the meal delivery service is that the drivers can check on the clients, many of whom live alone and have limited mobility, Adams said.

“We have found people that have fallen down and are waiting for the driver to come help them,” she said.

“It’s not just the meal that we take. It is that a human being has looked in on them that day,” Adams said.

“We’ve saved lives for sure,” Hutchings added.

Hicks said there are very few people around her RV park in the summertime.

“It’s a good feeling to have her come by,” Hicks said of the woman who brings her meals. “She is very good company. She is a nice girl.”

Hutchings said she couldn’t imagine cutting down the number of people receiving services because every person needs them. “It is an astronomical problem,” Hutchings said of the home-bound elderly in Pima County.

Adams worries the budget deficit may be too great to continue the volume of meals the agencies provides now.

“We’ve just been trying to be creative,” Adams said. “We’re going to need additional funding for programs or we’re looking at reduction.”

The Council on Aging receives $1.131 million annually from the federal Older Americans Act, and about $218,000 in matching funding from the state, county, city and United Way of Tucson to support the nutrition programs.

Hutchings said that part of the problem has been that the funding from the federal government has remained static while the program’s costs have grown.

It is also facing smaller contributions from the county and state, Adams said.

Salvation Army senior services director Gayle Way said she fears that some customers will hear of the budget problems, feel they are hurting needier people by accepting the service and decide to remove themselves from the program, or donate more than they can afford.

“We are concerned. We don’t want people to stop getting meals that they need,” Way said.

Adams said if the council has to reduce the number of days food is delivered, it will try to form a volunteer group to visit clients on days they do not receive food to make sure they are all right.

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To help or get help

The Pima Council on Aging, 8467 E. Broadway, serves as a clearing house for social service agencies and volunteers aiding the elderly in Pima County.

To sign up for services, call the Help Line, 790-7262, or go to www.pcoa.org.

To make a donation or volunteer call 790-0504, or visit the Web site.

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