Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 23, 1993 TAG: 9303230038
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
MORE ELDERLY DO WITHOUT HOT MEALS
Thousands of elderly Americans, home alone and too frail to cook, can't get meals-on-wheels hot dinners because programs across the country are strapped for cash.In Detroit alone, 1,500 seniors are waiting to get into a program that delivers 1,350 meals a day. The average wait is six months to a year.
Neighborhood meal sites for seniors are also shutting down by the dozens as federal spending on nutrition programs for the elderly fails to keep pace with rising costs and heightened demand from an aging population.
Detroit closed 19 of its 80 sites last year, Baltimore lost 17.
Advocates worry that growing numbers of seniors could wind up hospitalized or in nursing homes if they have to wait long to get on a meals-on-wheels route. Others may become malnourished if they lose their main meal of the day with the closing of a neighborhood nutrition site.
"We're seeing very frail, very low-income . . . women, or men who never learned to cook for themselves," said Toby Felcher, who is responsible for elderly nutrition services in Baltimore. "This program does exactly what it was supposed to do. We provide these basic services to keep people alive. And without food people don't live."
In Fort Worth, Texas, where demand for home-delivered meals has risen 100 percent in five years, Carla Jutson says she is constantly juggling her caseload to find space in the program for the sickest seniors.
If someone gets well enough to use a cane, they are taken off the rolls to make room for the latest patient discharged from the hospital into an empty house with empty cupboards, says Jutson, executive director of Meals on Wheels Inc. of Tarrant County.
According to Susan Finn, president of the American Dietetic Association, older Americans are at particular risk of malnutrition.
One-third of people over 65 skip at least one meal a day, and 25 percent have incomes under $10,000 a year, which "lends support to the fact that these programs are essential," Finn said.
The federal departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services spent a combined $620.4 million on senior nutrition programs in 1992, an increase of 8.2 percent from 1988. But consumer prices jumped 20 percent in the past five years and advocates say demands for hot-cooked meals grew even faster.