ORDER-2023-20 : Acceptance of Federal Title III B FY23 Grant Through Mystic Valley Elder Services in the Amount of $10,000

Transcript (~6 min @ 44:54)

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▶ 44:42 Jen Grigoraitis: Second, so we have a motion to recommend for passage made by presidents and Alice seconded by councilor. Karmchatie all in favor. Aye any opposed so that will be recommended to the full Council for passage. Thank you for being here tonight. Thank you.

▶ 44:57 Jen Grigoraitis: moving along order 2023-20 acceptance of federal title 3 Be fy23 Grant through Mystic Valley Elder services and the amount of $10,000. And I know we have Stacey mincello here. From the Council on Aging to speak good evening. Good evening.

▶ 45:14 Speaker 2: this is our

▶ 45:16 Speaker 3: it's a competitive Grant through the older Americans act 1965. distributed competitively through Mystic Valley Elder services And the good news is Melrose was awarded. I think this is our third year. Last year I asked for Less because the center was closed this year. I asked for more. And we got it. So there's three points for it. It's to serve. the underserved population of older adults LGBT Elders into combat social isolation

▶ 45:51 Speaker 1: Thank you.

▶ 45:53 Jen Grigoraitis: Here are there any questions from the council?

▶ 45:57 Leila Migliorelli: Vice chairmengliarelli this one quick question. Thank you madam chair. Thank you Ms. Angela for being here. This is an exciting opportunity. Especially, you know sort of post covid and the socialized isolation going on. Just a quick thing. I noticed in the Gran it says that the Melrose Council aging will serve 216 unduplicated individuals with this $10,000 Grant or is that just generally how much you serve over 216 is a forecasted Target number. Okay, just for the events for the folks that show up at this grant last year. The number was low and we hit 350. Wow. Okay, so it's sort of a balanced act but I numbers right now we've got about 4,000 in our database. There wasn't a pack in space to be had today. With all the events going on and the events like lunch was six people today was 24.

▶ 46:46 Speaker 3: So the numbers are really jumping up. Great, that's such a fantastic resource that you get you're all providing and you never say we're not busy. Yeah, that's it. I'm sure.

▶ 46:59 Maya Jamaleddine: Councilor maladene, thank you. Thank you for being with us tonight. I know the work that you do is amazing. I was saying thank you and your team myself. I've been referring many of our constituents to your social worker and your whole department. So thank you for being so responsive as always. What exactly how exactly your plan to spend it? Is it on events is

▶ 47:32 Speaker 3: that it's mostly events. It can be educational workshops. We've tried to Target diversity Equity inclusion. I'll give you a quick example because Mystic Valley one of the board of directors asked and what what are you doing for diversity and you know with this amount of money, you can't afford a consultant for you know an educational Workshop. So we decided that we would do food. So we did a cooking demo on Three items it was the Italian ravioli the Polish, pierogi in the Asian potsticker. We ran out of seats. We had enough food and the City of Newton called and said Hoosier Catera, but minimally We believe that if you provide food they come and it sparked conversation about traditions and a little more deeper into acceptance.

▶ 48:19 Maya Jamaleddine: awesome any I know now more population are you know your Outreach is actually helping to serve all marrows and more people are getting to know about your service. How are you doing any more Outreach to?

▶ 48:39 Speaker 3: We do have some Outreach plans. The social work is going to go out because we're heading into the holidays for the Melrose emergency fund her case load even right now for for being part-time is 22 folks. So that's pretty that's pretty high on our end. But as far as Outreach, we have once a week someone from the center leaves and goes somewhere like last week. I spoke at the church right down the street from us on West Foster. I'm heading over to Trinity next week and then we switch out so Do we have to do Outreach. It's always good to do Outreach, but we don't have to do Outreach. We're really we have a ongoing log of who contacts us

▶ 49:22 Maya Jamaleddine: for speakers. And do you follow up after they contact you? I know I send someone last week. Yes. Do you follow up on their you know after you direct them to certain?

▶ 49:36 Speaker 3: Direction or we try because we started actually I have an I have a social worker intern from Salem State one of her projects was evaluating outcomes. And if we were to do a referral or advocacy or some financial assistance of the Mel's emergency fund sometimes we don't know what the final outcome is. Yeah, because we've done our job which is to get them to where they need to be but we're really working on the interns position to do the Callback and ask we've had people that have really applied that have applied for pretty desperate. Situations and then not turn in the paperwork. Yeah, so we do we don't just close the case out. We really do the follow-up, but we're really working on a more solid evaluation of the measurable outcome. Well, I

▶ 50:20 Maya Jamaleddine: appreciate everything you do. Thank you so much. Thank you.

▶ 50:24 Speaker 1: Any other questions from the council? What is the will of the committee?

▶ 50:30 Jen Grigoraitis: motion to recommend Second, so we have emotion to recommend made by counselor gemaldine seconded by President sonella all in favor. Aye any opposed so that will be recommended to the full Council for passage. Thank you. Thank you very much. Cello