Meals on Wheels Swan Hill has a proud history of over 40 years of providing nutritious, fresh hot meals to the community.
The meals are prepared daily by the Swan Hill District Hospital and are delivered directly to the homes of older residents, ensuring they receive healthy and satisfying food at their kitchen tables. Many locals are part of this essential community vital support system for seniors.
For these residents, who frequently live alone, the meals come with a side-order: a cheery conversation with the volunteer who delivers the meals, which many would attest to being the best part of the service.
So, when the Swan Hill Rural City Council transitioned its CHSP home care services, including Meals on Wheels, to Uniting AgeWell in May, the aged care provider was quick to get the message across to the community: “It’s business as usual, and the continuation of this valuable service is a priority”.
The lifeblood of the Meals on Wheels service remains the volunteers – and Uniting AgeWell would like to pay tribute to Arthur Graham and the Swan Hill Rotary members rostered each week to call the volunteers, as well as the army of volunteers from the community who have selflessly rolled up their sleeves to deliver the meals over the years.
“You all have hearts of gold,” says Uniting AgeWell’s Loddon Mallee North Home Care Program Manager Alison Caldwell, who in her role runs aged care services in Swan Hill. “Thank you, Arthur and everyone else, for all you have done over the years. You are not only deeply appreciated, but needed!”
Well-known local businessman Arthur, who is the President of the Rotary Club, has been in charge of coordinating and rostering the team of close on 200 volunteers to deliver the services over the past four decades.
“I love being able to make a difference,” says Arthur, who even occasionally asked his staff at his financial services company to deliver meals during work hours. “It’s more than just a hot meal, soup, a sweet and orange juice; some of these older people are lonely, and the only person they talk to all day is the volunteer who drops off the food.”
However, after so many years of running Meals on Wheels, Arthur, who was Swan Hill’s Citizen of the Year in 2010 for his decades of service to Rotary and the Harness Racing Industry, is stepping back from the ‘hot seat’ but will still volunteer to deliver meals.
And the big-hearted man, who plays Santa in the community over Christmas, has this to say to his fellow Rotarians: “Please carry on volunteering for this wonderful service, the clients need you!”
The running of the program has been taken over by Uniting AgeWell’s CHSP Team, which includes some former members of Swan Hill Rural City Council’s Community Care Services Team, including Maureen Saville. This team also worked with Arthur to help coordinate and find volunteers for the Meals on Wheels program before the transition to Uniting AgeWell.
It’s an open secret that organising the delivery of the meals requires a high level of coordination and meticulous planning, with systems in place to handle unexpected changes while ensuring services continue.
For some more vulnerable recipients this service provides not only a meal, but an important ‘check-in’ as well. Each volunteer works one shift a month, and there are back-ups in case the volunteer can’t make it.
“Our volunteers are very important,” says Maureen. “They are able to provide us with valuable feedback as to the wellbeing of our recipients, which we as a team are then able to follow up on.”
Uniting AgeWell invests in its volunteers, with training as well as a thorough onboarding process.