T-L Photo/GAGE VOTA Belmont County commissioner Vince Gianangeli asks Senior Services of Belmont County executive director Lisa Kazmirski if the agency provides frozen meals for residents it serves.

ST. CLAIRSVILLE – Senior Services of Belmont County was unable to provide meals on Monday due to hazardous winter conditions.

Despite the harsh temperatures,executive director Lisa Kazmirski confirmed that residents who receive meals from the agency would continue to receive meals from Wednesday morning on.

“We’re also taking an extra chicken pot pie to everyone who gets a meal today [Wednesday] so that they can microwave it if need be,” Kazmirski said. “We’ve been getting a lot of calls and a lot of comments on Facebook about how come they’re closed and they get their four day weekend. Well, that’s not the case, because we worked a little extra before, and we work a whole lot extra after. In situations like this, managers are still at the office. We were at Sam’s Club Tuesday shopping. So things happen behind the scenes that most of the public will never see, but we are out there to take care of the seniors, not to get time off for ourselves.”

Belmont County commissioner Vince Gianangeli asked Kazmirski if the agency provides frozen meals for residents it serves.

She replied that only if the resident is deemed a passport family. According to the Ohio Department of Aging, a passport case is a Medicaid waiver program that helps Medicaid-eligible older Ohioans get the long-term services and support they need to stay in their homes or other community settings, rather than enter nursing homes.

Kazmirski said that a resident’s case worker is who determines if they would be declared a passport family.

“If their level of care dictates that they also need meals on the weekends, they get two frozen meals and we deliver those on Thursdays, just in case something happens on a Friday, so they have the extra and in some cases,” Kazmirski said. “There were some calls that I took where people were questioning where their meal was and I had to say that we can’t get to you, we’re closed today. The question is then, where do we refer next? Because if someone is so dependent on our one to one meal per day that’s delivered Monday through Friday, and they’re so dependent that they call three or four times when it’s not coming. The question is, should they still be living alone in their home? So we try to make referrals.”

She added that the CARES Program helps Senior Services with those referrals as well as referring residents to the Area Agency on Aging Region 9.