Senior Services Turning Reaction into Action crisis operations
What the county recorded
This item is not from the published agenda
It is a stretch of the recording that this archive identified as a separate matter — a call to order, a recess, or something taken up that the agenda does not list. There is no official title, no staff recommendation and no disposition, because the county never recorded one. Everything below is inferred.
The source document
The county’s agenda for Board of County Commissioners, May 7, 2024
The published PDF, as served by the county. This item is one entry in it.
The county’s minutes for Board of County Commissioners, May 7, 2024
The published PDF, as served by the county. This item is one entry in it.
What was said
Machine transcription of 17m of recording, with speaker names inferred from voice matching. 45% of 42 lines carry a name. It shows what was said, not what was decided, and both the words and the names can be wrong.
Hello everyone. My name is Davia Tarakis and this is Carolyn Johnson. and we are from Pasco County Senior Services. We will be presenting a presentation today on Turning Reaction into Action, a Senior Center Survival Guide to Crisis Operations. We have three objectives today that we will be focusing on handling the crisis. Keeping the seniors fed. and stay in contact while observing social distancing requirements.
We have found these three objectives critical to maintaining a high level of service when faced with a crisis. Handling the crisis. In our line of business, one of the first things we focus on in any emerging crisis is the food security of our seniors and how it is being threatened. When determining this, we focus on four pillars of food security availability, access, utilization, and stability. With availability,
we are trying to determine if enough resources are available to sustain the program through the crisis. Next we look at access. Do seniors have access to the resources required for a nutritious diet? Before the pandemic, many seniors relied on our senior centers for a nutritious meal. For some seniors, this is the only meal they would receive, let alone one that meets their daily nutritional requirements. Next we have utilization. Do the seniors have the ability and knowledge to prepare
food safely? Do they have clean water, sanitation, and health care needed to reach a state of nutritional well-being where all needs are met? Finally we have stability. We need to make sure that the supply chain is not threatened by economic, political, or environmental issues. Let's take a look at the COVID-19 pandemic and how we moved through our decision-making process by using the four pillars of food security. Did the crisis have an impact
on food security? This crisis did have an impact on food security due to the food shortage. The supplies were difficult to source locally, and backup plans were needed. where economic activity is disrupted? The answer for that question during the pandemic is yes. Grocery store hours were reduced, and many restaurants closed their doors as a result of the pandemic. Many seniors in our community rely on going to restaurants every day for some of
their meals. Since some seniors struggle to prepare food for themselves, going out to restaurants help them get the full balanced meal they need. This stopped abruptly during the pandemic. COVID-19 immediately presented new complicated, new challenges that we had never faced before. We had to innovate and get ahead of the crisis. and incredible new ideas came from all levels of our organization. Some of
the most innovative ideas came from Carolyn Johnson and her team at the Dade City Senior Center. Focusing on how to continue providing service to our congregate diners once the senior centers were closed as a result of the pandemic. I'll turn it over to Carolyn to talk about some of the creative solutions they have came up with.
On March 16, Pasco County Senior Centers were closed in accordance with the guidelines set by the CDC. The guidelines recommended social distancing at least six feet apart and no groups exceeding 10 people. They also recommended that anyone over 60 years old do self-isolate and not leave their homes unless absolutely necessity. With our seniors being the most vulnerable group to COVID-19, we had to rethink our operations from
every angle and make it a priority to find a way to continue services for our aging adults. I called my manager and asked if McDonald's and Burger King can serve their clients through a drive-thru. Why can't we? He liked the idea, so we drafted a proposal and submitted it to every agency on aging, who in turn submitted it to the Department of Elder Affairs for approval. Within 24 hours, the OEA had approved the proposal, and we've three fully operational
drive-through sites was up and running by March 18th. In order to accomplish this, we had to set up standard operations. Procedures and an incredible amount of work had to be completed to transaction the program to this format. The staff called clients, set up clients for pickup meals if possible, and planned for delivery with these clients that did not have transportation. To minimize risk, clients were made in their vehicles and a staff member would place the food in the client's
vehicle. while wearing gloves, a mask, and maintaining the social distancing. Humans are social creatures. Drive-through services provides an opportunity for clients to leave their home in a safe manner and accomplish small degree of socialization with our staff. Self-isolate can be dangerous for our seniors. Loneliness causes depression, premature death, and an increase of chance of developing dementia.
It's tough because we don't see the people from here anymore and we can't come in. And you know, you miss all the getting together and socializing.
Uh, for me it's the biggest thing besides not being able to see the local friends is family. I've had uh grandsons cancel trips twice coming down here from then there two of 'em in college, one in uh High school and they were all coming down as a family and they had to cancel. And that's been hard because I haven't seen them in a year and a half.
If nothing else, i it's lonely, you know, 'cause I haven't been able to get out much.
So, um, I think the biggest thing about the pandemic has been the loss of social and having to just be able to talk and see people. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
uh I get like seventeen dollars a a month for food stamps. Mhm. I don't have any other income except my social security and that goes for It doesn't take much to eat that up. I'm a a Korean vet. And so that's been it's been hard on me from that standpoint.
And even though it's a bad time for all of us, the nutrition center is making sure the seniors are well taken care of, getting their meals. and giving them something to do during the day. So
I appreciate the center. It's allowed me to make friends and uh appreciate the uh other uh people who come here and and the staff has been supportive and helpful in a lot of a lot of ways. So Really enjoy it here.
I like it. I love it because I see all the people here and everybody's so nice and they're smiling and they're waving. So it's like I'm in a parade every day.
Oh, the activities here have have been uh uh fun. I mean uh there's different groups and I I know my wife has been getting more active and bringing up more t more type of uh activities for everybody to participate in.
Games that you're giving us to do, the bingo and it's very nice because you're not leaving us just out on the edge. We're here with you.
Taking into consideration the importance of communication with our clients face to face while social distant in the drive-thru enabled our staff to maintain rapport while providing a nutritious meal to our clients.
A partnership with Area of Agency on Aging and local restaurants was a result of this pandemic. We rolled out the Dining Out at Home program. This program had the combined purpose of invigorating the local economy by partnering with local restaurants to prepare nutritious meals tailored to the specific needs of a senior that could be provided to food insecure Pasco County seniors. The Dining Out at Home program goes hand in hand with Operation
Feed Pasco, which provided a similar service to children, families, homeless, and other individuals in need. Here are some of the delicious meals provided by our dining out at home partner restaurants.
We now have a short video that highlights some of the successes from the Dining Out at Home program and Operation Feed Pasco.
Thank you. Thank you for providing meals when I couldn't go
out. For helping us help those in need during COVID-19.
Thank you. Thank you. For keeping us in business. For keeping me working.
When a crisis is identified, our priority as a nutrition provider is to ensure we are able to continue providing nutritious meals to our clients. Regardless of the crisis, older adults are typically going to be more at risk of food insecurity than any other age group. The importance of taking action cannot be overstated here, because every minute you don't take action, you are potentially putting a senior at risk. We need to educate and prepare our seniors for this
crisis. Increasing their understanding of the situation can help their mind at ease. In stressful situations, people often will be frightened. But if we prepare them with information and what can be done to stay healthy and safe, it will go a long way to alleviate some of that stress. To accomplish this during the COVID-19 pandemic, we had issued shelf stable emergency meals ahead of time and printed newsletters with CDC best practices
to educate and minimize the risk of transmission. Finally, it is critically important to preserve your continuity of operations and maintain the supply chain. Having a contingency plan for different vendors and staff is important to make sure you can sustain operations through the crisis. Some observations for our home delivery meal program. As seniors began to follow the stay-at-home guidance, we began to see a significant increase
in home delivered meals and drive-through meal requests. In the month of January, prior to the start of the pandemic, We delivered 14,413 meals to Pasco County seniors. Just six months later, we had an increase in our home delivered meal program by 66.5%, delivering just over 24,000 meals in July of 2020. Some observations for the Drive-Thru Meal Program in the month of January prior to the start of the pandemic, we
served almost 3,800 meals to congregate participants throughout Pasco County. With the closure of our senior centers and the transition to drive-thru operations, we experience a massive increase in service, providing over 9,000 meals through our drive-thru program. A hundred and forty two point eight percent increase. In this graph, the orange bars will represent the month of January of 2020, and the maroon bars will represent the month of July
of 2020, which was during the pandemic.
The New Normal. We continue to provide our aging adults with nutritious meals to maintain physical health and well-being. All centers have collaborated to plan new activities for the seniors in the new environment to maintain mental health and some symbols of normalcy. Cognitive thinking contributes to a healthy mind, helps prevent memory loss. Activities include drive-thru bingo, word search trivia, coloring contest, and more. Most
activities are also rewarded with a prize. Staff is continuously coming up with new ideas to keep the seniors active. When a client comes through and it's their birthday, the staff goes out and sings Happy Birthdays. Some ideas for the future are a drive-thru resource fair and a parking lot bingo, which we call Bingo. What you see here is I drive through activities. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we noticed that the community really came together to help
those in need. Many donations were provided, including handmade face masks from our Pasco County Libraries, toilet paper from the Tampa Bay Race, when it was in very short supply, personal hygiene kits from Baycare for every client we served, and distilled water. from Publix for CPAC machines, chef stable meal bags from the Rotary Club, and many, many more. These are just some of our donations received.
Asco County has always welcomed volunteers while many of our volunteers choose to self-isolate. Many more have stepped up from the community and other organizations to lend a hand in this time of need. With their helping hands, we've been able to increase our client counts to the highest numbers we've seen in years. Volunteers have brought fresh ideas to the program. to help improve the lives of our seniors. Volunteers for Seniors in Service and with Flaccoche
River Electorate out there making a difference by delivering meals to needy seniors.
We've reached out to Becky McKenzie at the Area Agency on Aging of Pasco and Panales to get her perspective on providing crucial services during a pandemic. In her words, we didn't realize the possibilities we had with nutrition services until we were forced to adapt. The flexibility that has been provided to us during this pandemic has actually allowed the PSA to think of more creative ways of delivering meals that clients seem to love. Example,
drive-thru meal services are a big hit. This model has never been seen before in Florida, but might be something to consider continuing with in the future. The particular crisis has forced everyone to re-evile their service models. It's shown that we are capable of, but also given an opportunity to take a better look at our vulnerabilities and where we can make processes more efficient even outside of a pandemic. And in conclusion,
a strong team can take in any crazy vision and turn it to reality.