A year later, Warwick, Cranston celebrate meals partnership

Daniel Kittredge
Posted 2/12/15

A year in, officials say an arrangement through which meals for Warwick’s Pilgrim Senior Center are prepared in Cranston has been a resounding success – and that it will likely lead to further …

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A year later, Warwick, Cranston celebrate meals partnership

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A year in, officials say an arrangement through which meals for Warwick’s Pilgrim Senior Center are prepared in Cranston has been a resounding success – and that it will likely lead to further collaboration between the two communities.

“This has worked,” Warwick Mayor Scott Avedisian said of the meals program during a visit to the Cranston Senior Enrichment Center on Wednesday. “We’re always told that government can’t solve a problem. This is a great example of how you can.”

“It’s opening up other areas and opportunities,” said Cranston Mayor Allan Fung, who was also on hand to celebrate the anniversary of the meals program’s inception. “It’s the right time … the resources we have, if we combine them, it makes it a lot easier for all of us.”

The mayors – along with Cranston Senior Services Executive Director Sue Stenhouse, Warwick Senior Services Director Meg Underwood and Ray Sinapi, chef and director of the Cranston center’s nutrition division – visited with seniors, took a brief tour of the kitchen and enjoyed a meal to mark the occasion.

The meals partnership, the gathered officials recalled, came together quickly. Westbay Community Action, for a number of years, had prepared meals at Pilgrim, both for that center and other facilities in the state. Warwick officials learned a little more than a year ago that the agency planned to subcontract its meals program to an outside catering company, meaning meals would no longer be prepared at Pilgrim as of Feb. 28, 2014.

Warwick subsequently reached out to Cranston – which already prepared meals for 29 sites across the site – in an effort to keep its food service for seniors local. Previous conversations between Fung and Avedisian regarding potential ways to collaborate – and Cranston’s hiring of Stenhouse, a former Warwick councilwoman, to oversee its Department of Senior Services – helped expedite matters. An agreement was struck, and Pilgrim became the 30th site served by the Cranston meals program.

The program is administered by Blackstone Health, which is a division of VNA of Care New England. The program utilizes federal funds provided through the state’s Division of Elderly Affairs under Title III C of the federal Older Americans Act. Approximately 1,400 meals are prepared at the Cranston center each day.

Avedisian said since the partnership began, Warwick’s center serves an average of more than 1,000 meals each month. That represents a roughly 40-percent increase from the average of 700 meals served each month prior to the agreement.

“You can see the difference,” he said. “People want to come and eat now, and that was not the case a year ago.”

Avedisian credits the quality of the Cranston-prepared meals for that increase. The soups and fresh vegetables that are provided, he said, have been a particular hit.

Underwood said she has also seen a marked difference.

“When I visit [seniors at lunch], now I’m hearing, ‘It was fantastic,’” she said.

The agreement has additionally helped further the shared mission of both centers to promote nutrition and active lifestyles for aging citizens. Sinapi noted that for some seniors, the meal they receive at the center is the only one they will eat on a given day. Stenhouse also pointed to the enormous benefits of bringing otherwise isolated or disconnected people into a community setting.

“Socialization is so huge,” she said.

Avedisian and Underwood said the increase in the number of meals served in Warwick has provided the critical secondary benefit of introducing seniors – many of who would not be reached otherwise – to the wide range of programming and assistance the Pilgrim Senior Center offers, from tax preparation to home heating resources.

“There’s a stigma around the word ‘senior,’” Underwood said, particularly among those on the younger side – which, she noted, is the demographic that is “growing exponentially.” She spoke of the need to move toward a re-branding of senior centers, moving more toward an image of “centers for healthy aging.”

“They want to look at it differently,” Avedisian said of younger seniors. “We need to change our programming.”

Stenhouse agreed that senior centers must adapt to meet the needs of a younger population, while continuing to serve the more traditional clientele.

The approach to the meal program under Sinapi’s direction – providing diverse, fresh, quality offerings – has been a part of the effort to reach out to younger seniors, as has the introduction of programs like “Pickleball.”

“It is that younger senior, and we’re getting them through the door,” she said.

Where the future may take the two communities in terms of collaboration remains unclear. On Wednesday, the gathered officials discussed working together on programming. Avedisian also broached the possibility of Cranston’s meals program expanding and using the Pilgrim center’s kitchen.

The operation did temporarily relocate to the Pilgrim center’s kitchen last year as the Cranston center’s kitchen underwent an upgrade.

“We didn’t miss a beat,” Stenhouse said.

The officials agreed that the sense of collaboration and familiarity that has resulted from the meals arrangement has made future partnerships more likely.

“We’re all on the same team,” Underwood said.

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