BY SAM LEVIN
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Originally Published: Tuesday, December 6 2011

Citymeals-on-Wheels is rolling to Queens senior citizens this week once again under the leadership of a group that had delivered the meals for 25 years before it lost its contract in 2009.

Queens Community House dropped off its first round of meals on Monday at homes in Rego Park, Forest Hills, Corona and Elmhurst as part of a larger reshuffling of the program.

The group, now with a contract through 2015, works to keep seniors out of institutions such as nursing homes by providing them with fresh food, said Naomi Altman, associate executive director for senior services at Queens Community House.

“This allows seniors to remain in the place they’ve called home for 40, 50 or 60 years,” she said.

The nonprofit group had delivered meals to seniors in Queens for more than two decades until it lost its contract to the Visiting Nurse Service of New York, which works throughout the city and the metropolitan area.

That nonprofit group won a competitive bidding process in 2009 that gave it jurisdiction in over Citymeals-on-Wheels in seven Queens community districts.

After Visiting Nurse Service decided not to continue this year, the city redistributed its routes to four borough groups, including Queens Community House.

“We very strongly believe in local community-based services,” said Bobbie Sackman, director of public policy for the Council of Senior Centers and Services of New York City.

Under the new contract, which expands the group’s oversight, Queens Community House will deliver 170,000 meals cooked out of its senior center kitchens in Forest Hills and Rego Park.

Altman said Queens Community House has established relationships with many of these residents, making Citymeals-on-Wheels more effective.

Delivering food was not part of Visiting Nurse Service’s expertise, a spokesman for the group said, explaining that the organization decided not to continue with the program to focus instead on its health care mission.

The city Department for the Aging is working to avoid interruptions or glitches in services for Queens residents during this changeover period, said agency spokesman Christopher Miller.

“We just want to ensure that seniors don’t feel the transition,” he said.

Beth Shapiro, executive director of Citymeals-on-Wheels, said she is glad to welcome back Queens Community House.

“We really feel they know their community and the people they serve,” she said. “Deliverers themselves on some level really become part of their family.”
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