Woodward’s assisted living center Providence Place is becoming an even more valuable community partner.

Not only does the center provide a home for active seniors who may need some assistance, but it recently branched out to lend some services to helping other area senior citizens.

Providence Place has teamed up with the City of Woodward and the Woodward Senior Center to ensure that the senior center can continue to offer meals on Fridays.

Due to government budget cuts, the Department of Human Services had to reduce funding to senior nutritional programs such as the Panhandle Nutrition Service, which serves the Woodward Senior Center and a number of other area senior programs.

So beginning Nov. 1, the senior center was to have stopped offering a hot meal on Fridays.

However, Woodward City Manager Alan Riffel said that the city government didn’t want to see that happen.

“As city government, it’s our function to see that those programs that serve our people directly, such as hot meals for seniors, aren’t disregarded,” Riffel said.

So Riffel said he “got with Brigetta Wilson, coordinator of the senior center, to discuss ideas of how to address this situation so we could continue to provide meals to her clients.”

He has heard that other senior programs in the area have resorted to things like pot luck meals or providing sandwich lunches to help make up for the missing Friday meals.

However, the Woodward city government wanted to ensure that the seniors would continue to receive a “healthy meal,” one that was sure to meet nutritional and special needs, such as for diabetics, Riffel said.

The city wanted to ensure that a dietitian was overseeing the meal, he said, so the city began speaking with the hospital and with Providence Place.

Since Providence Place already caters to seniors’ needs, the center’s administrator Debra Treadaway said she felt it just made sense for Providence Place to partner with the senior center to help fill in the gap.

“We’re able to incorporate it into the meal we’re already preparing,” she said.

In addition, Treadaway said, “We didn’t feel that we could let the seniors here in Woodward who were accustomed to having that meal on Friday, not have that.”

Especially, if it is true that “for some seniors it may be the only nutritional meal they may have that day,” as Riffel said.

The city manager said the agreement with Providence Place was set up before Nov. 1 so that seniors “didn’t see an interruption in the Friday meals.”

As part of the agreement, the city pays Providence Place $5 per meal, Riffel said, noting that the money comes from the senior center’s budget, which has been reorganized to help cover these new expenditures. The meal is then served on a donation basis, where the seniors can pay whatever they can and/or want, he said.

With approximately 35 to 40 meals being served per week, the city manager admitted that “a couple hundred dollars a week can add up.”

“But it’s something we feel is well worth the value,” Riffel said. “We’re determined to make sure this continues. We don’t want to try and save a few hundred dollars off the needs of our senior citizens.

“This is a program that is vital to our community and we want to continue to see that we meet those needs one way or another.”

With additional budget cuts likely, Riffel said the city will continue to cover the costs “as long as necessary.”

“We’ve enjoyed this opportunity to develop our relationship with the senior center,” Treadaway said, noting that the assisted living center appreciates being able to help out another agency.

In addition to its partnership with the city and senior center, Providence Place has also recently partnered with High Plains Technology Center for a video project.

Students from the HPTC marketing program visited the assisted living center last week to video different activities at the center such as bingo, exercising and a game of armchair volleyball, said activities director Shirla Kirkendall.

“It is a project through our student organization DECA,” said HPTC marketing instructor Forrest Rogers, adding the students also shoot video and do video editing as a business through the school to help raise funds for DECA programs and projects.

In addition, Kirkendall said the HPTC students would be conducting interviews with the residents as part of their video project.

“Their teacher was looking for a new project,” she said, noting that “we thought of an oral history from our residents.”

“They have so much heritage,” she said, noting that the Providence Place staff thought it would be nice for the residents and their families “to get some of that heritage on tape” by having the marketing students shoot video and record it on DVDs.

Treadaway said this project will now hopefully provide residents’ families a glimpse into their personal history.

This is intended to be an ongoing project, Treadaway said.

“We’re going to continue it and add to it,” she said. “We’re going to start with Christmas memories and then maybe do things about where they lived.”

“They have some real fascinating stories,” she said. “When you’ve lived 80 or 90 years, you live through a lot and have done a lot of things.”

The technology center has in turn opened its services to Providence Place residents through special senior computer classes, Treadaway said.

“We have four to five residents taking computer classes out there to learn about the Internet, e-mail and how to get pictures from their families,” she said.

“For most of our residents, they’ve never used one,” Treadaway said, noting “it’s pretty exciting” to see them learning how to take advantage of what technology can offer them, especially in terms of staying connected with their families.

The residents are also taking advantage of technology as part of their activities at the center, she said, explaining that some of the residents have been learning how to play Wii bowling, which helps with their exercise as well as socialization.

“Hopefully they’ll get into doing more Wii Sports,” Treadaway said, noting “we’re slowly inching into this century.”