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Health & Human Services Director responding to #207378 re: the teen snow shoveling program.
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Official Text
To the Honorable Board:
Board Order 207378: That the Director of Health and Human Services inform this Board of how the teen snow shoveling program is going this year.
The Teen Snow Shoveling program, which had 41 senior participants in 2015, now has 116 enrollees. Thanks to an increased presence in print and online media and outreach by the Health and Human Services Department, the program has tripled over the past 3 years. As the program continues to grow, we continue to seek out new and creative ways to ensure the needs of residents are met. For the past two years, we have implemented a procedure where enrolled seniors can contact the Community Services Manager directly throughout storms in cases where there is difficulty reaching the youth. Another strategy to maximize flexibility in the program is to have a small number of seniors contact the Community Services Manager directly when in need of assistance to be paired with youth on an as needed basis. Not all seniors that sign up utilize the program on a regular basis and this helps to ensure that youth that were paired with seniors that are not utilizing the program can still pick up jobs in their neighborhood. Over the course of the last storm, numerous seniors reached out with questions and requiring assistance and all were contacted in a timely manner. Also, seniors who reached out and were not signed up for the program received the necessary information on how to sign up for future storms.
The weekend of January 18th was the first major snow event this season and therefore we only have data from that weekend:
• 116 Enrolled senior citizens
• 51 Enrolled Youth
• 111 seniors were paired directly with youth
• 5 seniors were informed to contact me directly if they require shoveling assistance
I am available to answer questions and provide future updates.
Doug Kress
Director