MADAM,
this week sees the end of a long-standing and much valued voluntary service to many housebound, elderly and infirm citizens of Monmouth and district.
The delivery of hot meals by volunteers, known as the Meals-on-Wheels service, has come to an end in the Monmouth area because the Social Services department of Monmouthshire County Council cannot find a kitchen within the town from which to operate it.
The base has moved several times during the 30 or so years since Meals-on-Wheels started, but has been at Wyesham Infants School for the past few years. The kitchen there is now closing and meals for the children are brought in from another Monmouth school. This in itself is sad because it was a refreshing sight to see fresh vegetables and home-cooked puddings being produced there.
Last week a meeting was held to inform the volunteers what is happening and the attendance of well over 50 members of the WRVS who effect the deliveries of the meals is an indication of the concern and disquiet they feel that it has come to an end. Some members present have been part of the team for about 30 years, driving round the town and also the rural areas to take hot lunches to elderly people isolated in their homes and unlikely to receive many visitors.
The recipients of the meals are heartbroken that they will no longer have them delivered by regular volunteers who stop for a chat, discussion of family photographs and in some cases to help dish up the lunch. A universal favourite of all volunteers is a blind lady who requires help in this respect.
The County Council have treated the volunteers in a casual and dismissive fashion, calling the meeting at very short notices and failing to notify a large section of the helpers who only learned of the situation from The Beacon. They also failed to inform the Women's Royal Voluntary Service under whose umbrella we all operate.
Their efforts to find a new base have been sketchy and their proposed alternative system was received with cynicism by the volunteers present.
They intend to run the service from a single van covering all the rounds now in operation, the meals being heated within the van. The distance to be covered in a morning would be 47 miles with perhaps on some days 50 or 60 lunches to be delivered. Very expensive say the volunteers who in the main do not claim for their petrol expenses, and also impossible to achieve within a reasonable time frame. There will certainly be no time to check on the welfare and well-being of those they visit.
Indeed a sad day for the housebound and unwell and an expensive one for the rate payers.
Sally E Leatham
Wyesham