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Meals on Wheels in Western Australia
The Health Department of WA, through its Home and Community Care (HACC) program provides funding to around 100 organisation to assist in providing home delivered meals for frail aged or disabled people living in the community.
The funding provided ($1.70 per delivered meal at the time of writing in 2008) is to assist with the delivery of the meal and customers pay for the cost of the meal itself.
In reality, most services are charging much less that the actual cost of the meal and they can do this either because they use a large number of volunteers and keep staffing costs low, or because a ‘parent’ organisation (for instance a local council, community centre or aged care service) provides access to kitchens or other infrastructure and financial subsidies so that meals remain affordable.
In addition to home delivered meals services, there are also centre based food services that provide meals in a community dining room or day centre where clients can relax over a lunch and enjoy the company of others. Often they can purchase a packaged meal to take home for another day.
What sort of meals are provided?
Delivered meals might be hot and straight from the kitchen, or cooked that day but chilled for transportation, or frozen. Frozen meals are usually delivered in bulk, perhaps five to seven meals for one week. On Fridays some services will deliver one hot meal to be eaten that day, and two frozen meals for the next two days. Each service is different, much of it depends on whether they have their own kitchen or how far they must travel in order to deliver the food. Of course, the meals served in a community dining room are cooked that day and served hot. In addition to good food and company, there might also be other activities taking place at the same time, such as musical entertainment.
Who can receive this service?
Clients using the service must be assessed as being eligible to receive a subsidised meal, that is, they must be frail aged or a young person with a disability.
There are meals on wheels services in nearly every part of Western Australia – call Carelink (Ph 1800 052 222) to find out where your nearest service is located.
Volunteering
Most meals services use volunteers in a range of roles, especially as drivers delivering meals to people’s homes. This can be very rewarding work as many of the clients are unable to get out much and value the delivery as much as a social visit as for the food that is provided.
If you have a few hours a week or month that you can spare you could contact your local meals provider (Click this link for a list) or for more generic volunteering opportunities go to the Volunteering Australia website.
Are menus for special diets available?
Most services are able to provide meals for most clients who have special needs, such diabetics, and some offer a more specialized service such as Kosher or multicultural meals.
The Australian Meals on Wheels Association
ACSWA is a member of the Australian Meals on Wheels Association and an active participant on the association’s governing body. This is another way of ensuring that the voices of delivered meals service providers in the west are heard at a national level and provides a link to all the other meals on wheels representative bodies around the nation.
Meals on Wheels is the registered trade mark of the Australian Meals on Wheels Association Inc and WA meals providers must be affiliated with ACSWA to use ‘Meals on Wheels’ as part of their name.
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