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More Than Just a Meal | Winter 2024
Meals on Wheels
On the surface, the name Meals on Wheels pretty well describes what the program is and does: It provides hot meals via delivery driver—almost daily—to those who may otherwise not be able to get them.
But below the surface—and behind the scenes—there’s much more going on.
According to Meals on Wheels America (mealsonwheelsamerica.org), the national program, which was reportedly started by a group of Philadelphia citizens in 1954, has grown to serve nearly 2.2 million older adults annually. In Delaware County, an average of 1,190 meals have been served per day in 2023, according to data provided by SourcePoint. That figure, nearly 250,000 in total through the end of October, includes home-delivered meals, as well as those served in SourcePoint’s community cafes.
But a closer look at the numbers reveals the additional benefits of this critical program. The Meals on Wheels website indicates that:
• 77% of home-delivered meal participants say the meals improve their health;
• 85% say the services help them feel more secure; and
• 92% say the meals help them live more independently.
In Delaware County, a survey distributed by SourcePoint to meal participants showed that 75% of respondents indicated that meal delivery resulted in having someone to talk to and an increased sense of safety, while nearly half said on most days, the Meals on Wheels driver is the only person they see.
“We are more than just a meal,” said Karen Pillion, nutrition program administrator at SourcePoint. “Yes, it is a nutritious meal made with a lot of care that will be healthy for them, but we are also combating social isolation, giving them a relationship with their meal driver, and doing wellness checks.”
Pillion said the meal drivers have the daily opportunity to not only provide a meal to keep their clients healthy but also to check on them if they’re not.
“I can’t tell you the number of times we find clients who have fallen or are in some other type of distress,” Pillion said. “How long would they have been in that condition if not for our drivers?”
SourcePoint data show that in October alone, drivers indicated that 30 clients had some change of condition. On two occasions, 9-1-1 was called.
A history of growth
The Delaware County Meals on Wheels program is in its 16th year of operating out of the SourcePoint facility on Cheshire Road. As Delaware County has grown over that span, so has the program and its need for volunteers. Pillion said the program currently utilizes about 400 volunteers each week between drivers, kitchen staff, meal packers, and cafe workers.
“We currently have 36 routes, and we would love to split some of those because they have become so large,” Pillion said. “We try to keep a route to between 12 and 15 stops, but some have gotten up to 24.”
The growth of Delaware County in recent years is only going to continue, Pillion said, with the older adult population growing as much or more as other age groups.
“We do know that in the coming years the older adult population is just going to multiply,” she said. “When you have great school systems, then grandparents move in. SourcePoint has an impeccable reputation for what we offer, so people are moving here because of that. Last year, we had about 15% growth in the number of meals served, and now we’re at about 13%. Previous years were about five percent.”
In addition to managing the growth of the program, SourcePoint’s nutrition staff is also dealing with an unexpected shortage of volunteers.
“I don’t think anyone anticipated the volunteer issues, which COVID hurt quite a bit,” said Pillion, who added that the pandemic provided the opportunity for many of the program’s long-time volunteers to bow out. “The level of commitment is quite different now. People were locked down during COVID and didn’t like it. Now if they want to go somewhere, they go. And some have their own health issues or parents and grandkids to keep them busy. I can remember when volunteers would say, ‘I can’t do this today, I have to deliver meals.’ Now it’s the other way around.”
Dave Pace, SourcePoint’s nutrition administration manager, said they work to make sure the meals still get delivered, but having fewer volunteers means other benefits of the program are impacted.
“When drivers have more stops, they can’t spend as much time at each stop, so there isn’t as much of that personal connection with clients,” said Pace, adding that growing the volunteer base can be hindered by the daily meals schedule. “We are limited in what we can offer to volunteers based on the time frame when the meal delivery needs to occur. Most people will say, ‘Here is my availability. What opportunities do you have?’ and that may not match up with the meal delivery period.
One way that SourcePoint is planning to address this issue is the creation of a hub route in the southern part of Delaware County.
“That will allow a driver to feed multiple routes from a central location,” Pillion said. “The U.S. 23 corridor has become so busy and it takes longer just having people drive here to get meals. We figure we can knock 20 to 40 minutes off some routes by having this hub.”
The hub, which Pillion said they hope to start in January, is just one example of the out-of-the-box thinking that is needed to keep Meals on Wheels running smoothly.
“We’ll occasionally double up drivers and they’ll run two routes, which we try to make in close proximity to each other. We’ll pull administrative staff to deliver meals if we need to,” Pillion said. “We recently had three of our staff out on the road. We have some staff members who have more flexibility in their schedules and are willing in a pinch to go out on a route for us.”
“And we recently started piloting with one organization to work with corporate volunteer groups,” Pace said. “They’ll take a meal on a specific day and show up and do delivery. So that will help one day a week for a specific route.”
Pillion said the one caveat with having the corporate volunteer groups help is ensuring they have the appropriate background check.
“We require anyone who comes into contact with clients to be background checked. For these groups, what we are doing to mitigate that is work with their volunteers who have already had background checks completed,” she said. “The nice thing with the corporate volunteers is that, if the company commits, we know they will have someone there on a given day during a given week and the meals will be delivered.”
Kitchen challenges
Delivery of the meals is only one challenge that SourcePoint’s Meals on Wheels team faces. The daily food preparation is another. Tiffany Gilletly, SourcePoint’s food service manager, said the cost and availability of food items are two aspects of that challenge.
“There are still items that we can’t get on a consistent basis, so we spend a lot of time trying to plan around that,” Gilletly said. “It’s also a matter of getting items that meet the nutritional requirements set by the federal Older Americans Act. I spend a lot of time building our menus and try to follow the guidelines as closely as possible, especially for our diabetic clients and clients with heart or other health issues.”
“And our menus are done in advance, so if there is an out-of-stock item, you are committed to what that meal is, so where do you find what is missing?” Pace said.
Since the pandemic, SourcePoint has also incurred freight charges above and beyond the already increased cost of food. To cite one example, Gilletly said juice has doubled in cost.
“So you have to ask, do we discontinue it or just go to a smaller size? We opted for the smaller size, and that will help offset some of the costs,” Gilletly said. “Our goal is to figure out what is best for our clients in the end.”
SourcePoint’s Meals program has a target “per meal” cost, so any price increase has an impact.
“When you have an item that used to be 34 cents and it jumps to 74 cents, that immediately impacts the overall cost by that much,” Pillion said.
Gilletly said SourcePoint is also dealing with the labor issues that many other organizations have experienced.
“I’ve had a huge rotation in staff,” Gilletly said. “The drive of the workforce is different than it used to be since the pandemic, and everyone wants to be paid more money.”
Pillion said what Gilletly is seeing with the kitchen staff translates to the administrative staff, as well.
“People burn out. It can be a high-stress job because every day you wonder if we’ll have enough volunteers,” Pillion said. “When hiring, we look at resumes for longevity. It takes a year for someone to learn everything that happens here, whether it’s in the kitchen or the administrative area. We go in hoping we find someone who will stick around for a while, and we do look for people who are committed to our mission.”
“That is important because there’s this challenge of ‘You are expecting this of me and there is this level of stress, and I’m making X. I can make this same amount elsewhere with less stress,’” Pace said.
Because SourcePoint is a levy-based, nonprofit, social service organization, Pillion said they must answer to the taxpayers and keep things running while “watching those overhead issues.”
“Our federal funding pays for less than 1/3 of a delivered meal, and that funding runs out in mid-June,” she said. “Our levy pays roughly 65% of each meal and 100% once our funding runs out. It’s a tough predicament and demand is only going to continue to increase. What we’re seeing here as far as an increase in demand, leveled funding, and a challenge to get volunteers is something the entire network is seeing across the country.”
“That’s why our levy, our donations, and keeping the public informed of what we do are so important,” Pace said.
Ultimately, Pillion said she hopes staff and volunteers keep the impact of their mission in mind as they do the work and deliver the meals.
“It is very rewarding work, and you know every day that you’re making a difference and having a direct impact on your community,” Pillion said. “We do everything in our power to make sure those in our community who need a meal, have it. Our staff and volunteers live that mission every day and we couldn’t do it without them.”
To volunteer for Meals on Wheels or learn more about the program, call SourcePoint at 740-363-6677 and ask for the volunteer recruiter.
To donate to Meals on Wheels, go to MySourcePoint.org/give
Source: Jeff Robinson is the feature writer for My Communicator.
