Meals On Wheels

The fourth-weekend special offering for September will be Meals on Wheels. Meals on Wheels helps seniors maintain self-sufficiency and live independently in their own homes by providing nutritious, home-delivered meals and safety checks.

Elderly Linn County residents -- up to 600 most days -- are receiving their meals warmer and fresher thanks to the kitchen's new vacuum packaging machine. Meals on Wheels is housed in the Family Services new building at 819 5th Street SE. Before the move to new quarters in late April, meals were prepared at St. Luke's Hospital for delivery by volunteer drivers. Two cooks and a kitchen manager were hired by Family Services to prepare the meals.

The 23,000 square foot building also houses counselors and social workers for the agency's other programs: Consumer Credit Counseling, Individual and Family Counseling, and Survivors of Victims of Homicide.

The agency will hold an Open House on Thursday, 30 September 2004 from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. All are invited to attend and see for yourselves the area's most advanced "production-institutional kitchen."

Spending about $250,000 in federal funding through the Older Americans Act, Family Services prepared about 193,000 meals in the fiscal year that ended June 30. They expect that number to hit 220,000 this year. Most deliveries of meals are currently in the Cedar Rapids Metro area, but their service expansion may add up to 15,000 new rural clients.