The Roulant’s kitchen has been running at full capacity for several weeks now, exceeding our projections for 2024 by producing, with the help of our volunteers, around 140 meals a day for delivery, in addition to frozen meals for our community partners.
This growth in the Meals-on-Wheels is part of a series of reflections and adjustments that began more than two years ago to ensure that the service evolved in line with increasing food insecurity, the level of requests we receive, and with developments in home food services. Our sliding scale fee structure and gratuities program enable us to reach more vulnerable people, just as existing services that deliver frozen meals (such as Part du Chef, Les Chics Plats and La Cantine à domicile) enable us to redirect those who have a higher degree of autonomy to the appropriate organization. The convergence of these changes, along with the growing complexity and intensity of the social issues contributing to food insecurity led the Meals-on-Wheels team to reflect this summer on an action plan that would respond to both the realities of food insecurity and the Roulant’s strategic vision.
Preliminary work was done to rename certain delivery routes in order to more accurately represent the areas we serve: Mile End 1 has become Plateau Nord, Centre-Sud Plateau Sud (as we deliver no further east than Avenue Papineau), and McGill has been renamed Milton-Parc in order to match the actual name of the neighbourhood. These changes are the starting point for an in-depth reflection on the neighbourhoods we deliver to, the ratio of customers coming from each, and the socio-economic reality of these neighbourhoods. This work has yielded an ongoing period of adaptation, analysis of needs by region and redistribution of our delivery capacities, including our wonderful volunteers. What’s more, these changes are designed to improve the clarity of our service to the public and our partners, particularly in the health sector, and to enable us to identify potential gaps in our delivery coverage that need to be filled.
These logistical adjustments required the sensitive and complex work of clearly defining the clientele for whom our Meals-on-Wheels service is intended, since the service is uniquely equipped to serve those with the most barriers to accessing a hot and nutritious meal The Meals-on-Wheels team has therefore tightened up the criteria for clients of the service, measuring loss of autonomy, loss of mobility and social isolation in tandem with the suitability of other services to meet their needs. We are working on refining our referral system to ensure that we reach the most disadvantaged populations, in line with the objectives set for the Roulant in its new strategic plan.
This gradual adaptation of the service is not without effect on our clients.The evolution of the Meals-on-Wheels service has gone hand in hand with a clear change since Covid-19, as clients are less and less able to travel to attend the community events that are so precious to Roulant life. In keeping with our mandate to keep seniors active in the community, our team has adapted our formula, bringing our team into the homes of clients for special visits twice, in addition to welcoming them to the Roulant three times this year.
As the Roulant navigates the complex and growing reality of food insecurity in Montreal resulting from social issues and injustices, we are reflecting on how the Meals-on-Wheels service can more accurately and appropriately fulfill the needs of clients.
The Meals-on-Wheels team (Celia, Mike, Charles-Auguste and Béatrice)