Meals on Wheels Gorey answers community call
THOSE LIVING IN ISOLATION HAVE ADJUSTED WELL TOTHECRISIS
MEALS ON WHEELS GOREY has been adjusting its services over the last number of weeks in light of the Covid-19 pandemic to meet the growing demand in the community.
The team recently marked the bank holiday in a very special way for recipients by asking children in the area to bake some treats for the elderly and vulnerable people.
Although Meals on Wheels Gorey does not usually deliver on bank holidays, for the May and Easter bank holidays the team were able to facilitate the service of meals and treats through sponsorship from Wexford County Council’s Community Resilience Plan.
This came about with the help of Aidan Doyle of Pettitt’s Gorey, who stored the baked goods for collection at the weekend, and Councillor Pip Breen, who came up with the idea to pay for meals through Pettitt’s at the Easter Bank Holiday.
Cllr Breen said that from talking to Colin Webb of Meals on Wheels, he discovered that they cannot deliver on bank holidays.
‘When we heard that, we went off to arrange an alternative. I spoke to Aidan in Pettitt’s who agreed to get the food for cost price. Colin and everyone at Meals on Wheels said they’d deliver them and were delighted. It’s a win-win situation,’ he said.
Colin Webb explained that there have been many acts of kindness from the whole community, with a lot of inquiries about volunteering as well as unexpected donations from groups, individuals and businesses.
‘We never appeal for donations but generous financial support has been made by groups, individuals and business, such as the Gorey girl guides and Gorey Youth Needs.
‘During Covid-19, we reduced the number of volunteers interacting with our recipients, some volunteers had underlying conditions and were asked not to take part. Normally we have a total of 60 volunteers over a 14-day period, we now have four volunteers per week and therefore eight per fortnight. Instead of our recipients meeting a different person every day with their dinner, they are now just meeting one person per week and those volunteers have come from our normal roster of volunteers.
‘It worked in our favour that we had loads of volunteers but we got a great response from the community with a lot of offers to volunteer, which is fantastic. We’ve really been overwhelmed by that and we don’t like to turn people down who want to volunteer, so we’ ll be keeping the names on file if anything comes up, but as of yet we haven’t needed to recruit more people,’ he said.
Over the course of the pandemic, Colin’s team have taken on additional names through referral from the HSE and there is no longer a waiting list to sign up to the service.
‘These people that we have are vulnerable. The HSE refer them to us as they can’t cook for themselves. They might have illnesses like Alzheimer’s or dementia. With our new people, I don’t want to drop and we aim to keep them on afterwards but it has put us under a bit of financial stress. It’s a vital service at any time and particularly now, but we are way over budget in terms of our funding but I’m hoping that once all this is over, there’ ll be some understanding there by the HSE or the powers that be. I hope the legacy for our end will be that we’ll have a couple of dozen more people after this’ .
Colin said that even before the pandemic, some clients would only interact with Meals on Wheels volunteers on a day to day basis.
‘A lot of people we deal with would be isolated anyway, so their lifestyle hasn’t changed as a result of the coronavirus. Their lives are designed for this kind of thing and has made them very well prepared. In normal times, we’d be asking people to be more social. Thankfully, our recipients are coping well and we’ve had no emergency calls.
‘Our thanks goes to all our volunteers on the Gorey routes and those on the Courtown route as well as our caterers Anne Marie, Karen and Catherine in the kitchen at St Aidan’s where we’re based’.