On Wednesday, Meals on Wheels of Tarrant County will give thanks for what they have and also make the case that they need much more.
Meals on Wheels prepares and delivers about 1 million meals per year to homebound and disabled people in Tarrant County.
That meal preparation is now run out of a new 63,000-square-foot facility in Haltom City, which opened in the spring. The building is more than double the size of the organization’s former headquarters just south of Downtown Fort Worth.
The Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce will recognize the achievements of the Meals on Wheels program at a luncheon Wednesday.
Meals on Wheels of Tarrant County CEO Carla Jutson said she will begin that luncheon with remarks that emphasize the increasing demand that is being put on organizations like hers.
“America is in an age tsunami,” Jutson said, adding that members of the Baby Boomer generation are becoming their clients every day.
Baby boomers are also expected to live longer than previous generations did.
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By 2030, according to WebMD, when the first baby boomers reach 84 years old, the number of Americans older than 65 will have grown by 75 percent to 69 million. That equates to nearly 20 percent of the population who will be older than 65, compared to 13 percent today.
During that same time, Jutson estimated that demand on Meals on Wheels of Tarrant County will also increase by 75 percent, requiring the delivery of an additional 750,000 meals per year.
“We cannot afford to put people in nursing homes and hospitals at the increasing number that we’re looking at coming up,” Jutson said. “So [the question becomes] ‘How do we take care of them in the home?’ And that’s where Meals on Wheels certainly steps in.”
Jutson argues that her program, along with its army of volunteers — most of whom donate one to two hours of time per week — are able to combat rising healthcare costs far more efficiently than the alternative of their clients seeking care in a nursing home or hospital.
“We can actually feed someone and provide services for an entire year for less than one day in a hospital,” she said.
