 in the studio here at Davis Beanie Access. I'm Autumn Labay-Reno. Thanks for tuning in. Today we're gonna be talking about a nonprofit in Yolo County that fills some critical gaps in our safety net and how we take care of each other. And that's Meals on Wheels Yolo County. And I'm really pleased to have today as my guest, their executive director, Christy Skibbins. Thanks so much for joining us. Thanks for inviting me. So you and I have known each other for a while. Before the organization was called Meals on Wheels Yolo County because it's been through a few names and it's since its inception in 1975. Yes. So tell us where you're located and then let's talk about those critical services. Yeah, you might know us as People Resources Inc. or Elderly Nutrition Program, but we are Meals on Wheels Yolo County and we serve all of Yolo County. We are located our kitchen and our main administrative office is located in Woodland. We serve Woodland, Davis, West Sacramento and Winters at all of their senior center sites so folks can come there to eat lunch and the same lunch is served to home delivered clients also all over. We have about 27 routes all over. We're looking to start more and we serve almost 400 meals every weekday. I have firsthand experience of the program when my mom was first diagnosed with dementia and was still living on her own. We put different support structures in place and one of those was Meals on Wheels and we had lovely people who came to the door and it was, first they brought her a meal and so she had something to eat when I couldn't provide something for her and that was nice. But they also said hello and it was a little safety check. They saw that she answered the door so it's really a profound way of outreach to seniors. It's very important. There are over 5,000 Meals on Wheels organizations just in this country alone even though it's an international program and most of them these days actually deliver five frozen meals to last for the week and then they can microwave them but we are lucky that we are kind of small enough, big enough that we still prepare all of our own food at our kitchen in Woodland starting at 4 a.m. every weekday. We deliver it hot and ready to eat and that is a critical component because it allows that volunteer who's delivering that meal to do kind of a three-pronged thing, deliver the food which is absolutely needed to do that safety check or that wellness check-in to see how they're going, are they slurring their words or something like that that needs to be put up the chain or and also just to have a little chat, gosh it's a great day, today isn't the weather nice or you said your daughter was coming to visit you, how did that go or those kinds of things because a lot of these folks are so isolated and really they're with the TV all day long. Yeah, it's human contact. It is, yeah. So how many seniors are you serving in Yolo County currently? Well, it's hard to put exact number on it because it changes all the time. I imagine. The elderly, their health and those kinds of things change all the time. Last year we served 85,000 meals in this county. We served about 24,000 just right here in Davis. But every day we serve about 400 meals and two thirds of those are home-delivered meals. We actually go to the person's home, hand it in through the door or actually go inside and give it to them and the other third are at those four congregate sites. Now you would think this work you do is completely non-controversial and really it is and yet politicians have taken aim at meals on wheels. They have. Sometimes to our detriment and other times funnily enough to great income streams. Shortly after our current president was elected, his, at that time, his chief of finance, Mikvolveni went on national television and delivered the soundbite that, well, we have to cut programs like Meals on Wheels because it's obviously just don't work. Well, that was awesome because we got so many donations because people know that Meals on Wheels works and it was invented in England in World War II. It's going all over the world and it really does work. There's not another program like that and we don't get a lot of funding. Right now we're kind of waiting because Congress has just come back and the house has already passed an increase in funding for us for the next four years and also re-certified the Older Americans Act which provides for that funding. Of course, now it needs to go to the Senate. They're a little busy with some other things right now so we're not sure when that's gonna happen. We're okay till November 21st which is they've put that in place so that there's no shutdown of the government. I think of Meals on Wheels as a very successful social service agency in that you have a clearly identified need and you work very hard to fill it. And I'm aware that I was reading on your website you have something like 27 different routes you do and then you have four, tell us about the congregate gathering spaces. Yeah, so we really encourage the people that can still either drive or get a ride with somebody in Woodland. We have the community care car. Davis we have people actually biking to get meals to the Davis Senior Center which is awesome. And so because all those different locations have other things for the seniors to do. They're all very different. We have pool tables, we have computer banks that they can get on the computer and use them for the ones that are computer literate. And we have bingo and there's knitting and they're even little winters. They have their bingo, they have their knitting on Mondays and all those things. And just eating socially, sitting down with other people to enjoy a meal is a lot more than most seniors can enjoy. So it's very important that they do that as long as they can. It helps keep the dendrites connected. Isolation has profound effects too. I really saw that with my mom. And they're saying it actually has physical effects now. There's more studies about that. That it actually manifests itself physically. So you did a great interview on Davisville on Catert with Will Buchanan a few weeks ago in which you talked at length about the silver tsunami. So let's bring that forward into this interview so people get just a taste of what we're talking about. That term, what does that term mean? Sure, the silver tsunami. It's kind of just a nickname for a metaphor if you will for all of those baby boomers that were born between 1946 and 1964. And I was talking to somebody the other day and we were reminiscing about how when we were in school in the 60s that they couldn't build elementary schools fast enough to keep up with the huge bubble. Now fast forward all this time and here we are and all those baby boomers are now becoming seniors. So we still have that huge bubble, that huge demographic that we have to take care of. And also you have to remember that as people turn 60 years old which is the minimum age to receive our services, if they have not had good healthcare over the years, they've had a tough life. They're not really 60 years old in their health. They're more like maybe an 85 year old for everybody else. So they have a lot of dental problems and diabetes and a lot of problems like that, that they need this service like when they turn 60. And you shared an amazing statistic about how many people are turning 60. Right now there are between 10 and 12,000 people in America turning 60 every day. Every day. Every day and so now that doesn't mean they all need meals on wheels or other senior services also. But it means that that's how many there are and that's gonna happen for the next five or six years until this bubble is over. And so what they're really worried about is as all these people get older and even people that aren't really needing all the services when they're 60. When they start hitting 85, that's like the magical number where all of us start having some sort of health problems and they need meals or tons of other services that are needed by seniors. So it's a huge, it's a huge challenge. So every non-profit, and I speak from experience, every non-profit struggles to meet the mission and to do so with limited resources. So we've talked a little bit about meals on wheels challenges in that regard. What do you see changing over the next, with all those new people coming into the system, what do you see changing over the next five to 10 years and how will that directly impact your organization? Well, what's happened really in the last 15 to 20 years, most non-profits get a lot less government funding than they used to, you know that yourself. So as that government funding has gone down and the number of seniors has risen with the baby boomers and so on, then the need is there. We have a waiting list now. We're serving 400 a day, but we have a waiting list of 61 people waiting for meals. We have 15 of those are right here in Davis and that's really important. We try to get them on the routes and we are expanding the routes as we have more volunteers available, but it's right in the middle of the day. Sometimes that's hard for people's schedules. So we foresee this challenge, continuing over the next probably 20 years or so. So is that the big limiting factors having enough volunteers to deliver? Having enough volunteers and having enough money for food and staff and space in order to provide those meals. We're a little squeezed in our kitchen where we are right now, but it's okay. And but because we don't have enough funding, we could hire more people for the kitchen or we could get some more storage space or something or even hire some people to deliver some meals, but that means more money. So it's the volunteers are money or sometimes it's both. So are you in every community in Yolo County? We are not in Clarksburg and we're not in Dunnegan. And the reason why is we don't, there's two reasons. One is we have to keep the temperature of the food within a certain window because of our health department regulations. And so sometimes it's challenging to go to opposite corners of the county like that. The other thing is, is that we don't have a consistent number of clients in those areas. We'll get two people out in Clarksburg and they'll call and want services and then but they're only on for maybe a year and a half or something like that. We don't have enough to really start a program there. And also because we get some government funding, there are of course different regulations for each government entity that says, okay, you can't do this, you can't do that. So sometimes that involves the length of the route that you go on and those kinds of things. And so that sometimes precludes us but everywhere else we do, we even go out to Esparto, Knights Landing, YOLO. I think you said you recently added a route out in winters. Well, we need to winters. So that's one of your- For 44 years, the whole time we've been serving winters, we've just had one route out there. And whereas in other places, we have seven or eight or nine routes. And but we have enough clients now that we need to start a new route but we don't have enough volunteers in winters. So we really need that out there. So let's talk about how people can support you and how they can get involved. So I know Diana's going to put the website up on the screen so people will see that. And I've spent some time with your website this morning. There's lots of information there. But if people want to get, if they want to volunteer, does that, how do they do that? And do they need to be trained? What does that involve? Absolutely. Well, we designed our website a few years ago so it would really hit three audiences. Those who are looking for meals or they're family members and information about that. And those who are looking to volunteer and then those are looking to donate to the cause. So it's, if you're any of those three audiences or more than one, it will all be there for you. So volunteering, you just go to mowyolo.org and click on volunteers. There's all the information is right there. You can immediately email volunteer at mowyolo.org and that will go directly to our deputy director who's in charge of volunteer program. And he goes out to the various communities. You never even have to leave your own community. And it's about an hour of volunteer training. You do have to, we have to have a copy of your driver's license and your insurance because you'll be using your own car if you're delivering meals. And we put you on a route with somebody else who's experienced and you can do that for as long as until you feel comfortable and then you can take a route by yourself. A lot of married couples do it. They do it to spend time together and cause it's often good to have a driver and a runner, somebody that hops out of the car, gets the meals and goes up to the front door while the driver's turning around the car and getting ready for the next place. So that's good. Some people like to volunteer in the kitchen. In Davis, we have a lot of kitchen volunteers which is awesome and they come and help pack the food, both for home delivery or they serve the food to the folks that come there to the Davis Senior Center. Yeah. Well, our time is up. Okay. So I wanna thank you for coming in and speaking with us. And I just wanna say again, having had first hand experience with my own mother and the program, it's a really, it's really a life saving thing. It's the kind of thing that can turn a day around for a frail elderly person who's a little bit isolated in their home, can't really get out anymore. So we've been talking with Kristi Skivins of Meals on Wheels, Yolo County. And you can find out more at their website and you can find more programs like this online at DCTV.DavisMedia.org. And we thank you for tuning in.