REAL Services of Kosciusko County has moved to a new location, but continues to offer programs that assist the elderly, disabled and low-income individuals.
The new offices are at 110 E. Prairie St., Warsaw, and the Kosciusko Chamber of Commerce held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the service organization Wednesday afternoon.
Tricia Mentz, marketing and communications manager for REAL Services, said, “What we want to make sure to do is have people live independently with dignity. And in saying that, it’s very important that we are here to assist them in that process. We don’t want to walk for them, we want to walk with them in their pursuit.”
She also said, “The services that we do have here, at this particular location, and the monies that we take in, do come to this location. There’s always that fight: Does everything go to South Bend? No. It is equally proportionate in the services.”
REAL Services has the Center for Aging, which provides assistance for seniors.
“We have different criteria for it, but we will sit down with each senior and determine their needs that they need,” Mentz said.
It also has the Adult Guardianship services.
Virginia Sheffer, guardianship specialist, said the folks she serves are over 60 years old, have dementia, mostly live in nursing homes and “there’s no other family or friends who are willing, able or suitable to help them. So we’re kind of a last resort when it comes to that.”
She said REAL Services’ guardianship program expanded into Kosciusko County in March 2016.
“Before that, I was a case manager here, so I helped people get services to stay in their home as long as possible. So we have case management housed here as well,” Sheffer said.
April Pierce, representing REAL Services’ long-term care management team, said it has three care managers and one team leader/supervisor who works out of the Warsaw office to serve the community. All of the case managers were out of the office Wednesday working on cases.
“We support their caregivers, we help coordinate services and help them stay in the setting where they want to be in, most of which is always home,” Pierce said.
Dan Mohnke, director for Area 2 Agency on Aging, said his job was overseeing the guardianship program and the care management system REAL Services has in five counties. He also works with various agencies in those five counties “to help identify what are the needs, based on a survey for older folks that live in those communities, and then work with those local communities to try to help fund programs to help meet those needs.”
REAL Services also provides an energy assistance program. “If you meet the criteria, and you show a need for it, the energy assistance can actually keep that house going during the winter months when, as we all know, it’s very cold outside,” Mentz said.
“With the energy assistance program, we do also have weatherization kits. So if they don’t meet the criteria, they can also be able to pick up one of those weatherization kits to calk their windows and do different things like that to weatherization their own home,” Mentz said.
Volunteers are “huge” for REAL Services when it comes to anything they do, Mentz said.
Director of Development Judy “JJ” Jankowski said the number of volunteers REAL Services has varies from year to year, depending on what the organization has going on. Some years, it can be as many as 3,000 to 4,000 volunteers.
“It’s just very important that we have volunteers,” Mentz said.
In Indiana, she said the state will award REAL Services with a certain amount of dollars based on its number of volunteers. “It’s a win-win situation,” Mentz said.
Examples of what volunteers have done and can do include plowing snow out of driveways and rake leaves.
“It’s a really neat high school project for a lot of the kids to get involved,” Mentz said. ‘The seniors that they’re helping out, normally when the high schooler sits there and talks to them, there’s socialization there.”
She talked about Meals On Wheels’ food delivery to senior citizens and REAL Services’ 38 areas where it has nutrition centers.
“It’s very exciting work. And like I said, our volunteers are everything to us,” Mentz said.
