SourcePoint Leaders Reflect on 30 Years

FEATURE

Under normal circumstances, Bob Horrocks and Fara Waugh would have been sitting in the SourcePoint board room commemorating two anniversaries—the 30th anniversary of the organization and the 15th anniversary in its facility on Cheshire Road in Delaware.

But the masks and appropriate social distancing at the time of the interview were indicative of a third anniversary— two years of the COVID pandemic, which has proven to be an ongoing challenge while simultaneously showing the resilience of SourcePoint’s staff and volunteers.

Horrocks, SourcePoint’s founding executive director who retired in 2019, and Waugh, the current chief executive officer who came to SourcePoint in 1995 as its first social worker, looked back on the milestones of SourcePoint’s first 30 years while reflecting on a once-in-a-lifetime health crisis.

THE EARLY DAYS

A group of concerned citizens, service providers, older adults, and elected officials came together in 1991 to discuss the needs of the growing older population in Delaware County. At the time, while a variety of services were available within the county, the capacity of local service providers was limited, and large waiting lists were the norm. The “system” could not respond quickly or efficiently to individual needs for service. As a result, when experiencing difficulties living at home, many local older adults found that nursing home placement was their most viable option. As the community examined these issues, it became clear that action was needed to increase both the amount and quality of community-based care. A local coordinated system was needed to improve the accessibility to services in a timely manner for those who were most in need. A task force was formed that incorporated these community concerns into a blueprint for an organization designed to meet current and evolving needs. SourcePoint emerged in 1992 to fill this void. Bob Horrocks: I wasn’t around at the very beginning when a broad range of people from the community came together out of the concern that something better was needed for local seniors. But I was very grateful for the opportunity to dream, to plan, and to grow what has become a system of high-quality and coordinated service throughout Delaware County—and the envy of other counties throughout Ohio. While we had very humble beginnings—no office, no phone, and very little money—with the support of our community over the years, Delaware County has gone from worst to first in quality in-home and community-based services.

1994: FIRST AGING SERVICES LEVY

By 1994, SourcePoint’s staff and board had spent countless hours listening to the community. After many meetings and forums with community leaders, older adults and their families, service providers, elected officials, and others, a consensus developed around a plan of action. This plan depended upon community support of a local property tax levy, which would be devoted to services for local seniors. In the fall of 1994, SourcePoint’s first 0.5-mill levy passed by 58% of the vote.

State law requires that senior services levies last no more than five years, so SourcePoint went back to voters in 1999, 2003, 2008, 2013, and 2018. The current senior services levy of 1.2 mills was approved by 72% of voters and this funding will expire at the end of 2023.

Horrocks: While we had a very good plan for service development, the truth is that when it came to passing a levy, we really had no idea what to do or how to do it; we had to learn on the fly. We were able to get on the ballot in 1994 through a citizens initiative petition drive. We needed to gather about 5,000 signatures, so that summer we spent just about every weeknight and weekend knocking on doors and attending community gatherings to collect signatures. The process of talking to so many people and hearing their stories gave us hope that people really understood the need. We didn’t learn that we would be on the ballot until late August, and this left little time to mount much of a levy campaign other than through dozens of speaking engagements and word of mouth.

On election night we had no idea what to expect, but when the final tally came in all the work that we had done paid off with the passage of the community’s first senior services levy.

1995: FIRST IN-HOME CARE CLIENT

After the passage of the aging services levy, the task at hand was to become the primary source of professional expertise, services, and programs for aging well in Delaware County. It started with the creation of in-home care services, designed to help local seniors remain living safely and independently in their own homes, avoiding premature or unnecessary nursing home placement. These services include adult day care, chore services, counseling services, emergency response systems, homemaker services, Meals on Wheels, medical transportation, nursing services, personal care, and respite. Licensed social workers provide free in-home assessments and arrange and monitor the provision of quality services to ensure that these services meet the needs of older adults and their families. In 1995, SourcePoint served 49 individuals with in-home care; by the year 2000, that number grew past 1,000 and, in 2012, the 5,000-client milestone was reached. Horrocks: My memory is that it seemed to take forever before we served our first client. Leading up to 1995 we spent so much time trying to understand local needs, creating a workable plan for a real system of care that would be responsive to older adults and their families, and then building consensus and support for our plan.

Our first barrier to overcome was that we didn’t receive our first big levy check until the spring of 1995. We needed that money to pay for office space and to hire a person to help create a solid foundation and structure for carrying out our plan. The next pivotal step was to create real structure, real services, and a real system of care. This meant expanding service, developing standards, and identifying quality service providers with whom to contract. It also meant creating policies and procedures, internal processes, and lots of training. We weren’t providing services yet, but this work was essential to our later success.

By that fall, we were ready to go and we began to serve our first clients. We gradually began promoting our services. By the end of the year, we had enrolled and were serving our first 23 clients. By the beginning of 1996 word was getting out and we started the rapid growth that has accelerated through today.

Fara Waugh: I came on as the first social worker in 1995 and developed the in-home care program, which started as an abstract thought process.

Horrocks: It was very easy in theory, but making it happen was a lot of work.

Waugh: There was bringing providers on board and understanding that you had to monitor those providers.

Continued on next page.

1998: MEALS ON WHEELS

SourcePoint’s nutrition program can trace its roots back to the 1980s when Grady Memorial Hospital received a federal grant to provide lunchtime meals to local seniors. After the passage of the aging services levy in 1994, SourcePoint began to augment this funding in order to help the hospital expand the service. At the time, the hospital was cooking and serving about 30,000 meals each year. In 1998, the hospital asked SourcePoint to take on the day-to-day management of the program, which by then had expanded to nearly 85,000 meals each year. By 2004, SourcePoint was the only Meals on Wheels provider in Delaware County. During this time, SourcePoint continued to purchase meals from Grady until the program outgrew available space at the hospital. In December of 2007, SourcePoint began cooking meals for the first time, made possible by the opening of a large production kitchen at the new facility on Cheshire Road. SourcePoint’s Meals on Wheels are delivered by a team of dedicated volunteers.

Horrocks: From the very beginning we have recognized the importance of good nutrition to the health and well-being of older adults in our community. Studies have shown that up to 50% of older adults entering the hospital are malnourished, so the delivery of nutritious meals to those unable to prepare a meal for themselves has always been a priority for us. In a very real sense, our Meals on Wheels program is saving lives.

SourcePoint’s Meals on Wheels program has undergone a tremendous evolution from the early days of providing grants to Grady Memorial Hospital and Asbury United Methodist Church, to undertaking the management of the program, to then assuming the monumental task of cooking and delivering about 250,000 meals a year. Waugh: When I was going to be responsible for overseeing the kitchen and our first production of meals, that was scary and exciting at the same time. It’s one thing when the organization is accustomed to hiring office personnel; it’s different when you start hiring dishwashers and chefs and wanting to make them feel part of the organization. Horrocks: Grady had a contract with a service company to do their meals, and when we were looking at our kitchen it was an option to hire them or our own staff. We had so many issues with the company Grady hired and I wanted to have our own staff. Fara said, “We’ve never cooked a meal, how are we going to do that?” I said, “Well, before you, we didn’t have a social worker…” But the kitchen is a different culture. She was right; it would have been easier to bring in a food service company where it was their line of work, but I wanted to have more control.

As the number of meals to be delivered has grown each year, so has the number of dedicated volunteers. These wonderful folks make all the difference in the world. They make sure that the food is delivered hot. They also offer a big smile and a real sense of security that someone will be checking in on a daily basis.

2006: MANAGING HUNDREDS OF VOLUNTEERS

Volunteers have always played an integral role in SourcePoint’s success, but it wasn’t until 2006 that a formal management program was developed. By that time, SourcePoint had 459 volunteers, and that number has only grown. Horrocks: This may come as a surprise to some, but volunteers are not free. Like most good things in life, highquality volunteer programs require an investment. If you don’t regularly recruit volunteers and promote the benefits of volunteering, you won’t have a strong program. If you don’t match the volunteers’ interests with the organization’s needs, your volunteers won’t be happy. If you don’t provide training, supervision, and support, you won’t benefit from the volunteers’ commitment. If you don’t make continual efforts to thank the volunteers for their hard work, your volunteers won’t feel appreciated. It took us many years to figure this

out, but once we did, our volunteer program blossomed and now returns many times the amount of our ongoing investment. It has been wonderful to watch our volunteer program grow and evolve from a handful of dedicated individuals to the very large group who today help drive our mission at SourcePoint. My hope is that these efforts will continue to grow and evolve. Lord knows, we have enough work still to be done.

2007: THE BIG MOVE

In 2005, voters approved a bond issue that paved the way for the construction of a 61,000-square-foot building on Cheshire Road on the southern edge of Delaware. By the end of 2007, the building opened to the public and has been a vital resource for seniors ever since. The bulk of the building houses the enrichment center, which provides opportunities for local adults age 55 and better to be healthy and happy by participating in fitness programs, health and wellness courses, creative classes, social games, and more. SourcePoint houses a warm-water exercise pool, fitness center, dance room, game room, classrooms, and many other flexible spaces for group activities. The facility is also home to SourcePoint’s administration and office staff, including licensed social workers, as well as a large commercial kitchen in which Meals on Wheels are prepped each weekday morning. And while the facility has proven to be a benefit to the community, it can keep SourcePoint’s original mission of in-home care somewhat hidden.

Horrocks: What started us thinking about a bigger space was looking at the 2000 census and seeing how the population was growing. We knew we wanted to find a way to keep the baby boomers engaged, and we knew they would have a different set of needs. We knew we'd need a place for our staff, and a place for our Meals on Wheels program to grow. We got in touch with an architect, who helped with sketches. But we had no land and no money. We made a 3D cardboard design of the building and took it around to Rotary clubs, Kiwanis, anyone who would have us. Those plans got refined and we went to the county commissioners, ultimately putting a two-tenths-of-a-mill bond issue on the ballot.

We identified land on Cheshire Road where the new facility would be built if the bond passed. To do so, we asked the county auditor to put a point in downtown Delaware and draw a five-mile-radius circle and see how many people 60 and older would be in that circle. They did the same for the Cheshire location, and more people fell in that circle. But we got a lot more pushback on the Cheshire location. We were told it was way out “in the country.” Now that I’m retired, when I get out and talk to people or read something about SourcePoint, it’s like this place is part of the community now. It’s almost taken for granted, and good that over that time the community has gotten accustomed to it. I can’t think of Delaware County without it being here.

Waugh: We’re in the process of doing our next strategic plan and we surveyed our membership, and the thing I kept reading in the responses—especially in the member responses—is that, yes, it is a staple of the community, and they feel so fortunate to live here and have an organization like this.

Many of those who live in Delaware County think of this as a service organization, but a lot of people aren’t aware that we do in-home care. Some of the people who come and use this building may not be aware, as much as we try to educate about that.

Horrocks: This place is so in your face—it’s a very tangible thing—that it can conceal the in-home care part.

Waugh: Even now, you don’t seek out information about that kind of care until you needed it yesterday. Continued on next page.

2014: MERGING WITH SENIOR CITIZENS INC.

When SourcePoint moved to Cheshire Road, the organization shared space with Senior Citizens Inc., the group previously based on Park Avenue in Delaware that focused on social activities for older adults. In addition to the facility, SourcePoint and Senior Citizens Inc. shared a common goal of serving the community’s older population. After three years of careful research and discussion, the boards of both nonprofits made the important decision to merge and have one comprehensive organization to provide a wealth of service and program options to Delaware County’s growing population of older adults. Improvements were made as a result of the merger, including more efficient administrative costs, which meant putting more money toward better services and programs for the community. Horrocks: Our merged organization is not simply the sum of two parts. When we brought together all of the vital resources that the two independent organizations offered, we found that we were more than just an in-home care agency and more than just a community center for people over 55. We are now the central source in Delaware County for those who want to live well as they age. The name SourcePoint represents our role as our community’s central source for everything needed to thrive after 55.

2020: A ONCE-IN-A-LIFETIME PANDEMIC

The coronavirus was first identified through an outbreak in 2019, and failed attempts to contain it allowed the virus to spread around the globe. The World Health Organization declared it a public health emergency in January of 2020, and by March of 2020, it was a full-scale pandemic. It has impacted the way people in Delaware County and around the world work and live, and has had a dramatic effect on service organizations like SourcePoint, which is still dealing with challenges more than two years later. Waugh: In the earliest days, in March of 2020, I made the decision to close the building a week before the state made the decision to close. Back in those days when there was so little information, we were scrambling to get information from the state but we were not in the communication loop. I was reaching out to everyone to make sure we had the most up-to-date information. The most important things at that time were making sure we continued to provide meals and keep our team employed. We thought if we had to lay people off, we would not be able to get them back. We split our kitchen into two shifts, so if one person became ill or had to isolate, we had another that could continue operations. Before supply chain issues became a problem, we had between 15 and 20 days of meals that clients had on hand in case we did have to shut down.

We were making decisions about how social workers could stay connected, and there was a lot of telephone connection with the in-home care clients. Most did not have the ability to connect remotely, but we did porch visits if there were emergencies. We also created some remote classes that will continue; we were already thinking about doing those to enhance access to programming, but we sped things up about a year.

Horrocks: You probably learned that you were more flexible than you thought you would have to be.

Waugh: Our front desk staff called members and checked in on them. People were just so willing to pitch in and do whatever they needed to do. But nobody thought it would last as long as it did. We still have a few staff and volunteers out; we’ve had more employees sick in 2022 than in 2020 and 2021 combined. There’s definitely been a lot of learning. Horrocks: Remembering back to the earlier days, we felt like we had no backup if someone got sick or went on maternity leave. We were on such a shoestring and felt like we were walking a tightrope every day. We always felt like as we grew

that would get easier, but it really doesn’t. You have more positions that need to be filled and when someone is out, you still have to cover for them. Maybe this experience has helped you to see that people will step up. People have been tested and know they can do it.

Waugh: Staff is all back working full time. We did learn that some of the work can be done remotely within a lot of different positions, so that allows for flexibility. Horrocks: The technology has helped.

Waugh: Yes! Our IT people were busy—helping board members get connected remotely, setting up live streaming of classes. We learned some things that we will continue to use going forward.

2022: LOOKING BACK AND LOOKING AHEAD

As their conversation concludes, Horrocks and Waugh are asked what they’ve learned in their years with SourcePoint, and what comes to mind as they look ahead to the rest of 2022 and beyond, including to the next senior services levy that will be on the ballot in 2023.

Horrocks: I initially thought this organization would be seen as a good thing, particularly by the social service community. But the first couple years were really hard. So many folks were suspicious; they needed money to serve people and here was this organization that was just planning away and this knucklehead is bothering them about what’s needed in the community. Having people not be too excited about what you’re doing and not being all that helpful was not something I expected. Waugh: Stuff I thought was so stressful in the beginning was nothing in the context of the pandemic, and it has been rewarding to see how we have persevered as an organization. That’s due to the dedication of the people who are here. When we reopened, and we were one of the first centers to reopen after multiple interactions with the Ohio Department of Aging director, seeing those first few faces come in the door and how happy they were to be here and see each other again was extremely rewarding. One of the continuing challenges is trying to always balance the people’s right to make their own decisions about what they are comfortable doing and keeping a safe work environment, and to do it in a way that is non-political. Another ongoing challenge we face today is a crisis in home care workers. There are just not enough to serve people. We had a very small unfilled referral rate before the pandemic; less than 2% of the referrals didn’t go filled, and that number is significantly higher now. All across the country it’s a problem, but with in-home care a big part of our services, it is a challenge.

Horrocks: I retired at the right time. Fara has handled this much better than I would have.

Waugh: This will be my first levy as the CEO, and in this environment I’m a bit concerned. I’m hoping that people will remember that meals continued during the pandemic and we were still serving many in-home care clients with support and services, keeping people from going into nursing homes. But we still have a community that is pretty mobile, and still an influx of folks coming into the county that don’t know about us. If they’re younger and don’t have older family members in the area, those are the ones you need to be able to get the message to.

Horrocks: One of the messages in the next levy is going to be that home care has become more expensive. But when you can keep loved ones in their home, you know how important that is. That’s especially true during the pandemic.

The challenge this building brought is that your center is in Delaware, but your organization serves the whole county. Waugh: There are limitations within the walls of this building. We were beginning to reach capacity in a number of areas before the pandemic hit. Knowing the growth of the population that we serve, it is important that we take programming out into the community. We are prepared to be able to offer programs at other community centers and senior communities. It would be hard for us to have a second building. We're centrally located in the county now, so anywhere else you would put another building is not going to be ideal. So partnering with those other agencies and bringing our expertise to them is the way that we’re moving. There are a lot of rewarding things about leading this organization. Seeing our programs and services continue to grow and change in order to meet the needs of folks today, and seeing people here take advantage of the programs we offer and reopening our community cafes gave me a fresh perspective of what we do here. Horrocks: I get thanked a lot for things I didn’t really do. Someone will see me and say, “You guys took care of my mom,” or something that someone on our team did. I may not even know the person who got served. But it’s rewarding to watch this continue and thrive, and to have the community accept it and think of it the way they do. It’s certainly great to look back at it and rewarding to see the young people we’ve hired over the years grow. They’ll be leading this place in the future, and it’s been cool to watch that happen.

Jeff Robinson is the feature writer for My Communicator.