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Ethel Minnifield delivers frozen meals to Emma Palmer outside of Jackson, Miss. In the rural area, frozen TV dinners have replaced hot meals for seniors, and weekly deliveries replace daily visits.Hunger
Meals on Wheels pares back from hot food to frozen
Some seniors wait more than a year for food assistance
Margaret Davis, 72, of Hamtramck was on the Meals on Wheels waiting list for over a year before getting help. She has heart trouble and uses a motorized wheelchair. Health problems are common among those who receive meals.
Nancy Shepard delivers a meal to Jessie Thompson in Detroit. Meals on Wheels directors are relying more on volunteers like Shepard to cut costs.
Dawn Bistany, left, and Nancy Shepard organize meals for Detroit seniors. In the past three years, at least 66 Metro seniors have died while waiting for food assistance.
Mary Dillard, a resident of Hinds County, Miss., relies on meals delivered by Ethel Minnifield. Overall funding for the Hinds County program dropped 36 percent in the past year.
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DETROIT — In Detroit, shut-in seniors on the waiting list for federally subsidized hot meals face a harsh reality: They won’t get help unless someone currently in the program drops out or dies.
Some seniors have been waiting for more than a year.
Across the country, there are now more than 139,000 seniors on waiting lists.
The Meals on Wheels program, which provides hot meals nationwide to seniors who are homebound, is facing a severe funding shortfall. Federal money for the meals program — $180 million this year — has remained flat for the past two years after an initial hike of $24 million in 2002.
Feeding those on the waiting list alone would cost an additional $181 million.
That’s equal to 1 percent of the Bush tax cut on capital gains and dividends this year.
Meals programs for the elderly have traditionally received significant support from nonfederal sources, such as states, local governments and charities. Those sources, however, have dwindled during the lean economy of the past three years.
The program is seen as an inexpensive way to keep seniors out of costly managed care. The average cost of providing hot meals to someone in the program is $1,300 a year, while nursing home costs can run as high as $50,000.
With a growing elderly population and funding that has not kept pace with demand, those running meals programs across the country have had to make difficult choices. Some have created waiting lists; others have scaled back on services or cut staff.
The number of those waiting, say meals officials, would be even higher if the names of all seniors seeking assistance were recorded. In some cities, waiting lists have been closed and seniors discouraged from applying.
Waiting list grows
The Detroit program, which serves 2,600 seniors daily, has 264 people on its waiting list.
Bernice Dubois died last year while on that list. She is one of at least 66 Metro Detroit seniors who have died while waiting for assistance in the past three years.
The 63-year-old Detroit woman, with a long history of heart trouble, was on the waiting list for months.
“Her heart was so terribly bad that she couldn’t take a step or two without being short of breath,” said Dubois’ sister Maeola Malone. “She loved to cook but couldn’t get around in the kitchen no more, and those meals surely would have helped.”
The 76-year-old Malone, who uses a wheelchair, said she was forced to cook for her sister, who lived nearby.
“I need help myself,” said Malone, whose 83-year-old husband also has difficulty getting around. “But my sister needed help, and I wasn’t about to let her down.”
Mary Williams also died while on the waiting list. Her neighbor of three years, Pearlie May, said the body of the elderly widow was found in her Detroit home last year.
While on the waiting list, Williams, a diabetic with heart trouble, got her meals from a sister who lived across town.
Margaret Davis received help after being on the waiting list for more than a year.
The 72-year-old Hamtramck widow, who has a long history of heart trouble and gets around with a motorized wheelchair, was finally put on the program in late August — a week after being released from the hospital.
Health problems are common among those who receive subsidized meals. Four out of five recipients have frailties similar to nursing home residents, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Before Davis began receiving meals, she said she cooked for herself sitting on a chair near her electric stove. It was a task made more hazardous because she sometimes breathes with the help of an oxygen tank.
“I knew it was a little dangerous, but I didn’t have a choice,” Davis said. “But I took every precaution to be safe. I would use only one burner.”
Frozen meals cut costs
The meals program is open to all seniors, regardless of income, but serves mainly the poor. Davis, who lives on $961 a month in Social Security benefits, fits that bill.
She said that after paying utilities, food and rent — which just went up $10 — she typically has less than $200 in the bank. The program, she says, helps stretch her budget a little further.
Even after getting off the waiting list, Davis experienced another casualty of the funding cuts. She was asked if she wanted frozen TV dinners, instead of hot meals.
Meals on Wheels programs across the country have tried to cut costs by going to frozen meals, which seniors must reheat. In Detroit, 40 percent of seniors in the program get frozen meals. The frozen meals are also cheaper because they can be delivered once a week instead of daily.
For Davis, the TV dinners were out of the question.
“A very nice young lady wanted to know if I wanted frozen meals,” Davis recalled. “I told her that if I wanted frozen food, I would go to my refrigerator. She said she agreed.”
In rural Hinds County, which surrounds Jackson, Miss., Meals on Wheels recipients don’t have a choice.
Frozen TV dinners have replaced hot meals for seniors, and weekly deliveries replace daily visits.
It is a way to cut costs because overall funding dropped 36 percent in the past year, said Ethel Minnifield, who heads the program in Hinds County.
Minnifield is also relying more on volunteers for delivery, cutting the need for paid staff. But the frozen meals have not been popular with all seniors.
Retired health department worker Vivian Lovelace, 88, said she preferred the hot meals.
“The frozen food tastes a little like plastic,” Lovelace said. “The last set of food I got didn’t taste as bad. I guess it wasn’t frozen as long.”
But Lovelace said she is still grateful for the meals.
“If I didn’t have this program, I don’t know what I would do,” Lovelace said. “I had to sell my car years ago, and I don’t have much money.”
Daily visits disappear
While delivering frozen meals once a week instead of hot meals daily saves money, it also undermines one of the benefits of the program: face-to-face contact with a vulnerable population.
“Daily visits allow our staff to assess the condition of many of our shut-ins and see their needs,” said Paul Bridgewater, executive director of the Detroit Area Agency on Aging. “This is very important in a group like shut-in seniors who are already at high risk.”
These risks are particularly high in Detroit, which has a large low-income population with limited access to health care and proper nutrition.
Indeed, seniors in Detroit have a 40 percent higher chance of early death than seniors in the rest of Michigan, according to a 2002 study from the Agency on Aging. The study found that between 1990 and 2000, more than 17,000 adults died prematurely because of poor health care.
“Research has shown that getting good, balanced meals contribute to good health,” Bridgewater said. “Many of our seniors are simply not getting that.”
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