Grab-and-Go; The Cibola County Senior Center fights food insecurity

GRANTS, N.M. – The Cibola County Senior Center has managed their way through the COVID-19 pandemic and is ready to start reintegrating regular services, but some COVID-safe practices will remain for the future, along with some services which were added during the highpoints of the pandemic. One of these remaining programs is the Grab-and-Go meal initiative which started as the pandemic shut down the congregate lunch settings that visitors to the senior citizens center was accustomed to. Secretary of the Aging and Long-Term Services Department Katrina Hotrum-Lopez spent the day of July 28 in Grants, NM, viewing the senior center and speaking with its staff.

Grab-and-Go

A mandate from the governor’s office to focus on nutrition helped spur the Grab-and-Go initiative which allowed senior citizens to have at least one hot meal a day, in an effort to end food insecurity.

“When COVID hit, we knew that we had major food insecurities – before even COVID hit – and when it did hit, we still had those insecurities. We knew that we needed to keep the senior centers open, so Grab-and-Go was a way for us to make sure that not only the senior, but people that are living with them – maybe grandchildren – had at least one hot meal a day,” Secretary Hotrum-Lopez said.

The Grab-and-Go meals continue to be a hot item at the Cibola County Senior Citizens Center, because it really is as simple as it sounds. Seniors can walk into the facility and receive their meal so long as they are signed up.

Because of vaccination rates, senior citizens have the ability to eat lunch in a congregate setting in the cafeteria, “Now that we’re sort of in a safe place where the majority of people are vaccinated, the state feels it is safe to reopen our cafeteria settings. There is some guidance on that, but we want people to congregate. Not everyone feels safe yet, you know, not everyone is vaccinated yet, but we want to see our seniors in here being active and getting the same interactions they had before.”

208 food boxes were given out through 2020, 717 meals for seniors under 60 were also given out during the year. A food box typically consists of fresh fruit from local growers, and hearty, healthy, nutritious foods. During the pandemic, some regulars were lost from the program, some from disease and death, and others from fear. To address this, the Cibola County Senior Citizens Center does wellness checks on their regulars.

Cibola’s senior center has seen a 22 percent increase in services provided to area seniors since the pandemic began. 13,949 meals have been given out in 2021 so far, with 32,257 home delivered meals having also been given out. “[Staff at the Cibola County Senior Citizen’s center have been] accommodating and meeting the needs of the aging population here,” the secretary said.

Aging and Long-Term Services provides funding to senior centers, ensures that meals are available at the centers, and they ensure that the needs of the elderly are met.

Director of the senior citizen’s center Suzette DeArmond thanked Secretary Hotrum-Lopez for her interest in the Cibola center and for actually knowing what was going on in the program, “Its awesome that you know what we’re doing,” she told the secretary.

Looking to the future

“I think that this particular senior center is very unique,” Sec. Hotrum-Lopez said. “I think this community has a unique challenge in that there is a lot of seniors raising their grandkids, or at least have a really active role in their life and I think we can do more to make things easier for our seniors by providing options for our seniors and their grandchildren as well. We can really make this a center that fits the community need – focused still on the senior – that really meets the community need and addressing any sort of issues.”

During the pandemic, the Aging and Long-Term Services department were allowing grandchildren of seniors to also receive meals, “We figured that the seniors were getting meals for their grandchildren… Over COVIDtime, we had 1,600, nearly 1,700 meals which were taken by children. That’s probably because a senior brought them, we didn’t say no because food insecurity is real.”

Secretary Hotrum-Lopez didn’t offer any specifics on when these new policies may come into effect, “This is hot off the press,” she said.

Efforts to feed both seniors and their grandchildren will continue as new ideas come up to address the food insecurity issues of Cibola.

Reopening

“It has been tough,” Sec. Hotrum-Lopez said; reopening the senior centers hasn’t been an easy task as each of the senior citizen centers across the state have different needs in reopening. The secretary said that the reopening process of senior citizens centers is gradual and slow because special effort is placed on keeping the senior citizens safe.

“We had hiccups all along through COVID-19, these are unprecedented times and surely we’re going to have hiccups,” Sec. Hotrum-Lopez said. “We’ve had to go back to the drawing board multiple times.”

The Grab-and-Go meals have been successful in Cibola, but not in every community. Ensuring that the meals continued was a priority of the Aging and Long-Term Services department,

The department was tracking COVID-19 numbers as the pandemic began, and the Aging and Long-Term Services department had two days from when they started planning COVID-19 protocols to the shutdown of the state. Within a week, the staffs at all senior centers had come up with a new way to keep the hot meals coming.

“That’s incredible work that the staff here [Cibola County Senior Citizens Center] did. It speaks to their dedication to the population here,” Sec. Hotrum-Lopez said.

To help keep the senior citizen center open, vaccinations are available at the facility to ensure the facility can be fine. 40,000 seniors were vaccinated by the Aging and Long-Term Services department after Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, who used to run the department, allocated a special allotment of vaccines to the department.

Another large effort from the governor was to address senior citizen food insecurity “think outside of the box, food is a basic right and basic need that humans have,” Sec. Hotrum-Lopez said.

Ombudsmen

A series of volunteer services are available and

Ombudsmen is a program every state has, the effort of the program is to help keep a watchful eye of residents in long-term living arrangements. Volunteers to this program are trained to help seniors address their issues.

“This is really critical in New Mexico, you know, we take care of our own,” Sec. Hotrum-Lopez said.

Across the whole State of New Mexico there are 70 nursing homes and 239 assisted living facilities, but there are only 50 volunteers for the entire program.

To sign up for the Ombudsmen Program visit https://nmaging.state.nm.us/protecting-adults/ombudsman/long-term-care-ombudsman their life and I think we can do more to make things easier for our seniors by providing options for our seniors and their grandchildren as well. We can really make this a center that fits the community need – focused still on the senior – that really meets the community need and addressing any sort of issues.”