By Shelley Swift | Daily Reporter
HANCOCK COUNTY — Hancock County Senior Services will soon be on the road again.
The nonprofit shut down its transportation services nearly two months ago as the pandemic found central Indiana.
Now, nearly eight weeks later, it’s preparing to resume its ride services on Monday, May 18.
“We’ve been looking at (the potential for reopening) for the last several weeks and have been putting together a plan with regards to what that would entail,” executive director Bob Long said. “We’re anxious to get back to providing transit services, but we want to do so in a way that is extremely conscious of the safety and health of our clients as well as our employees.”
The phone lines reopened Monday, May 11, for those wishing to schedule rides for next week. About 20 trips were booked by Tuesday morning, Long said.
For now, Senior Services is providing rides only for essential needs like medical appointments and grocery shopping. “The dispatchers have discretion,” Long said.
Hancock County Senior Services provides about 1,500 one-way rides per month, serving between 200 and 400 different clients each month, he said.
Before reopening, Long met with his staff of 13 drivers to see how many were comfortable returning to work, and about half of them said they were.
“This is a big decision for our drivers, since a lot of them are over 60 themselves and so are in the high-risk category” for COVID-19, he said.
Only those who said they feel comfortable will be offering rides next week, said Long. When they do, drivers will be required to ask riders a list of questions before providing transportation.
Reasons to refuse service include having a fever of 100.4 degrees or higher in the previous 72 hours; having cold or flu symptoms or being around someone with cold or flu symptoms in the previous 14 days; or being around someone diagnosed with COVID-19 in the previous 14 days.
Riders will be required to wear masks. If they don’t have one, drivers will provide a cloth mask and encourage riders to launder them and wear them on subsequent trips.
At the Senior Services office, drivers and staff will have their temperatures taken twice a day. “We’re trying to play it as safe as we possibly can,” Long said.
Since discontinuing services on March 20, Long said, clients have been understanding and patient, recognizing the seriousness of the situation and the need to close. Yet the closure has been especially hard on staff, he said.
“We live to serve seniors, and transportation is a huge component of that. It’s frustrating not being able to serve the people that we’re supposed to be serving who need our help,” he said. “Once we started to realize we could indeed reopen, it was a lot better on the staff psychologically because there was a nice goal to aspire to, rather than this constant uncertainty of how bad it’s going to get.”
While the staff is approaching the reopening with great hope and optimism, “we are set to pull back at a moment’s notice if some unforeseen huge outbreak reoccurs,” said Long.
He expressed gratitude to the individuals and companies who helped supply Senior Services with face masks, gloves and face shields, and to Healthy365 — a nonprofit that operates out of Hancock Regional Hospital — for their help.
When Senior Services was forced to suspend services, Healthy365 picked up the slack — providing rides to essential medical appointments.
“Our drivers were not in the at-risk category like most of their drivers, so it was safer for us to provide the transportation,” said Amanda Everidge, executive director of Healthy365.
Providing transportation services was also a great way to utilize hospital staff whose jobs had been suspended due to the pandemic, she said.
In addition to using its own cargo van, Healthy365 was granted use of four vehicles from Greenfield car dealers Inskeep Ford and Dellen Automotive Family. The Hancock County Community Foundation also reached out to Healthy365, offering a $1,000 grant to cover the cost of fuel.
“The amount of support we’ve gotten from the community has been phenomenal,” said Everidge, who anticipates that Healthy365 will continue to provide necessary support or work to find ways to fill any gaps or barriers to local transportation services.
Kim Voorhis, director of the Greenfield Senior Center, knows a lot of her members will be happy to hear that Senior Services is back in business.
Some seniors use the service to get to and from the senior center, but the center isn’t scheduled to reopen until July 6.
“The mayor made that decision (May 8) based on the governor’s guidelines for high-risk groups,” Voorhis said.
In the meantime, she knows local seniors will enjoy gradually getting back to their normal routines — even if that just means going to the hairdresser, the doctor’s office or the grocery store.
“I think everybody is just anxious to get back to something that seems regular to them,” Voorhis said.
Since the senior center closed two months ago, she’s seen seniors leaning on each other and staying connected, even though they can’t gather to play cards, work out or shoot pool.
“We’ve had a lot of them calling to get their friends’ numbers so they can stay connected. It’s great to see people leaning on one another as we continue to get through this,” Voorhis said.
To schedule a ride through Hancock County Senior Services, call (317) 462-1103.
