Home Charitable Foundation Grant Helps CONTACT Cape-Atlantic Reach Elderly Residents in New Ways

OCEAN CITY – For elderly residents who are isolated from the community, CONTACT Cape-Atlantic offers connections to in-home services, such as mobile meals, home health aides and personal alert buttons. Thanks to a grant from the Ocean City Home Charitable Foundation, more area residents will have access to these vital services. On June 15, the Foundation awarded CONTACT Cape-Atlantic a $3,000 grant to help fund the organizations Gatekeeper Program, which helps identify elderly residents who can benefit from in-home assistance.
The Gatekeeper Program targets individuals who, as a result of their employment, already have daily contact with local residents. Cable company employees, delivery drivers, public utility employees, letter carriers, bank tellers and other employees who are in regular contact with the public are taught to identify elderly residents who might need assistance and to refer those residents to CONTACT Cape-Atlantic for help.
Just like CONTACT Cape-Atlantics daily reassurance call program, the Gatekeeper Program is beautiful in its simplicity, said Jean Jacobson, President of the Ocean City Home Charitable Foundation. People who really need in-home services arent getting them, simply because they havent asked to receive help. It makes perfect sense to enlist the help of people who are already out and about in the community and are most likely to notice residents in need.
According to Patti Smith, Vice President of CONTACT Cape-Atlantics Board of Directors, the grant will ultimately help area residents remain in their own homes for a longer period of time. The program offers elderly residents the support and reassurance that they need in order to stay in their own homes, rather than living with relatives or moving into a nursing home or other residential facility.
The $3,000 grant awarded to CONTACT Cape-Atlantic was one of 19 grants presented to area nonprofit organizations at the Ocean City Home Charitable Foundations awards reception in June of 2011. The Foundation presented a total of $50,000 in grants at the reception, bringing the organizations donation total to more than $640,000 since 2005.