LAKE COUNTY — As social restrictions are tightened in hope of preventing a large outbreak of coronavirus in Lake County, the senior centers that support the county’s older, more vulnerable populations have been forced to adapt.
Places like the Highlands Senior Center in Clearlake, which like many local centers closed its facility to the public beginning this week and is unsure when it will be able to reopen, are making the most of their Meals on Wheels programs, offering daily meals for pickup and trying to maintain enough volunteers, all while dealing with lower revenues due to the coronavirus emergency.
Highlands Director Joyce Overton said her center is trying to add grocery shopping and medication delivery to its list of services during the ongoing period of isolation.
“Whatever they need, we’ll go shopping for,” she said, noting that the elderly are at a high risk during the pandemic. “We’re trying to keep our seniors out of the public.”
Instead of coming into senior centers to eat meals, which are offered free each day with a suggested donation to anyone over 60, seniors are urged to call ahead at their local center, and place an order for a meal that they can then pick up at lunchtime.
The Middletown Senior Center has developed a unique way of offering meal pickup to its seniors: by drive-through.
Director Lori Tourville said that after the center served its last meal in the dining room on Friday before shutting down its facility to the public, staff worked quickly to develop a system that allows seniors to stay in their cars while picking up daily meals during the coronavirus pandemic.
Meals are packed into a sterile bag, then pushed out to the sidewalk on a cart by a staff member. Seniors are “instructed to pull up curbside and have their passenger side door facing the building,” Tourville said. “We’re pretty excited about what we’re doing,” she added.
Inside, staff have been practicing social distancing and enhanced cleaning protocols, Tourville added. Due to fears of contracting the virus, the Middletown center’s volunteers—many of whom are seniors themselves—have largely been sent home, and the staff that remains on hand has been stepping up to fill in.
Live Oak Senior Center in Clearlake Oaks, which like the other centers has been expanding its Meals on Wheels program and offering food for pickup, is “running smoothly” in the ever-changing conditions, said Executive Director Dan Hobbs.
But Hobbs said he is worried for the well-being of many seniors who rely on the center for social interaction. Talking to his community, he said he’s found that loneliness is “their number one sadness about the whole thing. They’re missing the socialization.”
In Middletown, Tourville expressed a similar feeling. “The center is a big social place for them,” she said. To lose it is “a really big deal,” she added.
Hobbs noted that with the elderly afraid to leave their homes, some who need it may not be coming out to pick up their meals. Whereas about 40 seniors regularly come to eat lunch in the dining room each day under normal conditions, roughly half that number are now ordering for pickup.
Lakeport Senior Center Director Jonathan Crooks said the services senior centers provide in Lake County have historically not reached all the people they should.
Of what Crooks estimated to be about 3,500 food-insecure seniors in Lake County, meal programs are only serving “about half of those,” he said. “In my opinion we’re not doing enough.”
This shortcoming is due to an ongoing lack of funding for Meals on Wheels programs, Crooks said. In Clearlake Oaks, Hobbs noted the regular funding “does not cover the cost of the meals,” not to mention overhead like staff pay.
To bring in enough revenue, many senior centers operate thrift stores and host fundraisers. But during the coronavirus pandemic, such essential sources of income are just not possible to maintain.
“We want to make sure we get our seniors fed,” Tourville said. “People are mailing money in,” she noted, but it’s not enough.
The Middletown center’s thrift store typically brings in over $1,000 a week in revenue. Like many businesses in Lake County, it’s been closed until further notice because of the coronavirus. Three major upcoming fundraisers for the Middletown center have also been cancelled or postponed, Tourville said.
At the larger Lakeport program, where the center’s thrift store brings in $5,000 each week, Crooks is projecting his center will lose more than $50,000 in an eight-week closure, which he called “the best case scenario.”
“We’re hurting with that, but right now we’re okay,” he said.
In Clearlake, Overton said she’s already contacted California Assemblymember Cecilia Aguiar-Curry to lobby for more funding, and is seeking donations wherever she can get them.
Overton stressed that the cost to maintain Meals on Wheels delivery for a single senior is relatively low.
“A little bit goes a long way,” she said. At about $5 per meal, “It takes less than $2,000 to feed a senior for a whole year,” she added. “If everybody donated $5 to their senior center, that would really help out.”
Some local centers have begun working together during the coronavirus pandemic to step up calling programs that put seniors in touch with volunteers who can offer helpful information.
Lakeport director Crooks has formed a network being called the “C-19 Senior Phone Brigade” to train willing volunteers to perform such calls to local seniors. A related Facebook group called the “COVID-19 Lake County Seniors and Disabled Support Network” provides information on how to volunteer not just for calls, but food delivery, meal prep and grocery shopping.
Crooks said other center directors are involved in the group, which he described as an effort to “create a seamless support network for the seniors” during the pandemic.
