Better at Home is a provincial program that helps seniors live in their own homes by providing simple non-medical support services delivered by local non-profit organizations.
The program was established in Smithers/Telkwa in April 2021 through Smithers Community Services Association (SCSA). There are now over 70 participants in the program.
Meals on Wheels is a concept that has been adopted in many countries around the world. The idea is to deliver warm meals to seniors at their own homes for a reasonable price. The program was established in Smithers many years ago.
Northern Health runs the program and meals are cooked locally in its kitchen facility. Each month a different local organization puts together a group of volunteers to distribute warm meals up to five times a week at lunchtime. Better at Home communicates with all the organizations’ coordinators to ensure the program runs smoothly.
“We are still looking for an organization to step up for the coordination of meal distributions for the months of March, April and October. All volunteers do a criminal record check for the safety of participants,” said program coordinator, Francoi Depey.
READ MORE: Better at Home program helping seniors
What kind of organization or group could be involved? Any group as long as volunteers have a valid drivier’s licence and criminal record check.
It is an easy process that can be done very efficiently online for free, and Better at Home personnel can help with that. It is up to each group to figure out how to get organized. Some decide to assign a person per day for the duration of the month, others assign a week to each volunteer.
What counts is to make sure people will get their meals delivered when they expect it (participants in the program can receive a meal on the day of their choice, up to five days a week). So, whether potential volunteers belong to a book club, a music band, or a sport club, they can get involved as an organization.
Meals on Wheels are distributed to a limited number of people (mostly seniors). So far meals have strictly been distributed within the Smithers town boundary but that is something Better at Home would like to change.
Better at Home provides services in an area spread between Hungry Hill to south of Witset. It is a large area and because of distances it would be very challenging to deliver warm meals on a daily basis, so the focus will remain on the Smithers/Telkwa area for now.
One alternative is to deliver frozen meals that have been prepared locally. In the summer, those meals could be prepared with more local ingredients. The quality of ingredients would make the real difference with other generic frozen meals purchased from grocery stores.
Better at Home would collaborate with local cooking facilities.
The advantage of frozen meals is that several meals could be delivered at once to a program participant’s home.
The quantity of meals delivered is limited by the space capacity of participants’ freezers. As much as Meals on Wheels serve lunches, that broader service would serve meals that could be used for any meals of the day.
To be consistent with Meals on Wheels in Smithers, the same fee per meal will be applied, being supplemented by a subsidy made possible through a grant obtained from United Way Lower Mainland.
Better at Home plans to rely on volunteers to deliver frozen meals, however, gas expenses will be covered by the non-profit organization.
For additional info contact Francoi Depey at 250-847-9515 ext. 2008.
deb.meissner@interior-news.com
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