Melissa Bailey Photo
(Updated Thurs.) Daily deliveries of chicken and split pea soup are slated to end on Feb. 1, as the Dixwell/Newhallville Senior Center feels the impact of sudden cuts to a regional elderly nutrition program.
Citing “funding constraints,” the Agency on Aging of South Central Connecticut, Inc. (AASCC) announced cuts to the number of meals available through a state-run program that aims to give low-income seniors access to healthy food. The cuts come to the Elderly Nutrition Program, which last year home-delivered over 100,000 “Meals on Wheels” to seniors in greater New Haven as well as over 170,000 meals to 21 “community cafés” such as the Dixwell/Newhallville senior center. Seniors get the meals for a suggested $2 donation.
Beginning Jan. 15, all new applicants seeking home-delivered meals in greater New Haven will be put onto a waiting list, with exceptions for seniors with “urgent needs,” according to a statement released Tuesday by the AASCC. Current Meals On Wheels recipients will continue to receive meals.
The lunch programs at four “community café” sites, where seniors gather for group meals, are slated for closure as of Jan. 15. They are: The Dixwell/Newhallville Senior Center at 255 Goffe St., the East Shore Senior Center at 411 Townsend Ave., as well as sites in Branford and West Haven. (Update: In New Haven, the deadline has been extended to Feb. 1.)
Those sites were chosen because they serve fewer than 25 people per day on average, according to a statement from AASCC. The other 17 café sites in the greater New Haven area, which includes 20 towns stretching as far as Madison and Milford, will remain open. That includes sites at Bella Vista and the Atwater senior center in New Haven.
Those 17 café sites will stop serving coffee and tea, and meals will be available only by reservation, and may be capped.
“Out Of The Blue”
The statement came as a joint announcement by the AASCC and the Bridgeport-based social services agency FSW, Inc., which took over the nutrition program in January 2009 after the Community Action Agency of New Haven was cited for mismanagement. FSW sub-contracts from the AASCC, which pays for the program with a mix state funds and federal funds administered through the Title III‑C of the Older Americans Act. The program is overseen by the state Department of Social Services (DSS), which is keeping funding constant for next year.
Pat Wallace, New Haven’s elderly services director, said the impending cuts come “out of the blue” during a difficult time of the year.
“In the heart of the winter, we’re telling seniors that they can’t have a cup of coffee with lunch, or worse still that they can’t have lunch,” she said.
Wallace said that the city has several cost-cutting ideas that could potentially save the program. She said word of the closure came on short notice, and that the city is committed to finding a solution to fiscal problems “without cutting meals or cutting sites.”
FSW proposed the changes in service after the AASCC cut funding to the New Haven program by $273,000 this year, according to Bill Hass, FSW’s president and CEO. That’s about 14 percent less than the $1.9 million Hass was expecting to receive.
The cutbacks came not due to a loss in federal money, but to increased costs, including a new state requirement to provide nutrition counseling, according to Kate McEvoy, deputy director of the AASCC, which is based on Long Wharf Drive in New Haven.
At the Goffe Street senior center, where a dozen seniors ate chicken and played cards Tuesday, loyal lunch-goers shuddered to hear of the news.
Jeannette Green (at left in photo above, with lead volunteer Melzetta Reed), said she relies on the program for a hot lunch five days per week. The meal brings her nourishment as well as company.
“Food brings people together, you know that,” said Green, a 63-year-old retired Yale-New Haven Hospital employee. She said she would be home alone if not for the meal program, which has brought her close to a group of lunchtime regulars. “It’s like a little family.”
“It’s good to get out of your apartment and talk to someone,” agreed 87-year-old Mattie Dew (pictured). As part of the program, Dew gets a free ride from My Ride to the senior center from her Bristol Street high rise for lunch.
Several seniors said they would not trek out to Goffe Street if not for the lure of the food.
That’s one reason Don Dimenstein, a local advocate for seniors, called the cutbacks “horrible” and “tragic.”
“For seniors, that meal in many cases constitutes the best meal they would get for the day. It’s nutritious, it meets all the requirements of what is recommended for seniors to eat. And it brings them to the senior center, which means it gets them out of the house and enables them to socialize.
“To eliminate that program is going to hurt them in many ways,” Dimenstein said.
Dimenstein led the city’s elderly services department for eight years before passing on the reins last year.
Wallace, the current chief, vowed to look for a way to continue the meals by helping cut other costs associated with the program, or by finding other money to pay for it.
The city has four “community café” sites at senior centers in Dixwell/Newhallville, the East Shore, Atwater Street and Bella Vista.
Wallace said the city only found out two weeks ago that the lunch programs at the first two sites would be closed.
“We had never at any time been notified that our meal sites had been at risk of closure,” Wallace said.
The Dixwell/Newhallville cafe served an average of 22 seniors per day last year, and the East Shore’s served 13, Wallace said. She said she has not been told of any other criteria for closure, other than the census numbers being below an average of 25 per day.
Wallace said while the two New Haven sites are slated for closure, one in Madison that serves only eight people per day shall remain open.
FSW’s Hass said the two senior centers “were chosen because of under-utilization.” “We also looked at whether there are other sites nearby that are close and accessible,” he said.
“We don’t want to reduce the service on any level,” Hass said, “but given the sizable reduction in funding, we really don’t have the choice.”
Rising Costs
AASCC’s McEvoy did not provide a detailed account of why the agency is cutting funding to FSW. She said that there is no loss in federal funding, but rather an increase in costs associated with the program.
She gave one example: “enhanced nutrition education requirements” enforced by the state.
The state recently began enforcing long-standing requirements to provide individual nutrition counseling to seniors who are deemed “at risk” of poor nutrition, according to elderly services’ Wallace. The new requirement will cost an extra $75,000 to AASCC’s nutrition program, between the counseling and associated data entry, she said.
State DSS spokeswoman Kathleen Kabara said there has been no reduction in state aid to the program.
“State funding is expected to remain level in 2011,” Kabara said.
Kabara brought up one reason that costs may be rising: AASCC is currently negotiating new contracts with vendors for the nutrition program. “While we don’t have definite figures, it is expected that the meal costs will increase by as much as 11 percent,” Kabara wrote in an e‑mail.
AASCC buys the meals from Lindley Food Services Corporation, which recently raised its prices, according to Wallace.
Wallace rattled off several ideas for saving the program money without leaving seniors hungry.
Cliff Tucker (left) and Howard Stellmacher (right) came to the Dixwell/Newhallville senior center for the roasted pork and stayed for the penuchle.
She said New Haven could make use of an existing relationship with nutrition counselors at the Hospital of St. Raphael to curb costs of the nutrition education requirement. She also suggested city staff at senior centers take on the tasks of FSW employees who are hired to distribute the meals at the community cafés, saving FSW money. Or the state could stop yanking money away from AASCC’s nutrition grant to repay the state for when the Community Action Agency double-billed the program over two years ago.
The city could also help make the program more efficient, she said: The greater New Haven area Meals on Wheels program has a 3 percent no-show rate, meaning that seniors order the meals then don’t show up to accept them. She said she’s confident that percentage could be reduced, in part because of FSW’s track record doing so in Bridgeport. FSW has run the Meals on Wheels program for over 30 years. That city has a very low no-show rate, “close to zero,” she said.
“If Bridgeport can do it, New Haven can,” Wallace said.
Wallace called the cuts “very surprising” especially because of the timing, just a quarter of the way into the federal fiscal year, which began Oct. 1.
She said the cuts represent “the wrong direction” for the state in a time of “fiscal scarcity.”
“The state is supposed to avoid unnecessary institutional care for seniors,” she pointed out. If seniors can’t get meals, they’re at much higher risk of joining an institution, at a higher cost to state and feds, she argued.
The Agency on Aging’s McEvoy said though the fiscal year began in October, Congress has yet to pass domestic spending bills, so her agency is only able to give FSW “best estimates” of how much funding there will be.
Though the cuts are still planned for Jan. 15, all sides said they’re committed to working to avoid cutting back on meals.
Last year, FSW served 171,889 congregate (community café) meals to 2,442 seniors and 100,464 home-delivered meals to 854 seniors. The organization is committed to working with towns to continue serving as many meals as possible, said FSW’s Hass.
Wallace also said she has also reached out to the Connecticut Food Bank for donations of coffee and tea.
“I don’t think we’re anywhere near having explored all the alternatives,” Wallace said.