Fire district outreach program supports vulnerable residents

LAKE WENATCHEE — For some residents of Lake Wenatchee area, the nearest hospital, pharmacy, and large grocery store is at least a 30-minute drive, with traffic and weather often extending those durations.

While willing and able residents may not bat an eye, the distance can have harmful implications for elderly and disabled residents, limiting their access to routine medical care, necessary medications, and other basic needs such as food and clothes. However, for many individuals, maintaining independence and aging in place is a priority to their quality of life. Recognizing this, Lake Wenatchee Fire and Rescue (LWFR) created a Community Outreach Program, which meets residents where they are.

“It's all about helping our local community members live better,” said LWFR Lieutenant and program coordinator Mike Pirotto.

The program was spurred by the pandemic. Afraid to leave their homes, older residents were foregoing doctors appointments and avoiding Safeway, and not able to “live the life that they should,” said Pirotto. The program started with food delivery and about 10 residents, but grew significantly over time.

“I'd love to see every person in the valley here know about the program,” said Pirotto. “If they know it exists, they know they can turn to it should the need arise.”

Today, the program is operated with about six LWFR volunteers who serve between 25 and 30 residents at any given time. The team will do home visits and safety assessments, check vital signs, pick-up prescriptions and food boxes from Plain Pantry, assist with transportation for medical appointments, and make referrals to other local nonprofits for assistance with housing, health insurance, and even tax assistance. If an individual needs something an outreach program doesn’t offer, its volunteers can be a liaison for connecting them with the right resource, said Pirotto.

“The goal is to keep the elderly or disabled person, for the most part, safely and healthily in their home for as long as possible. It's essentially ensuring the quality of life,” said Pirotto.

The program’s services also have a ripple effect. In offering routine vitals checks and safety assessments, the volunteers can help identify a problem before it escalates.

“If you spot a medical issue early, you're able to deal with that issue early on before it becomes an irreversible problem, potentially,” said Pirotto.

These preventative measures can not only keep residents healthier for longer, but they also reduce the reliance on calling 911, which is imperative for the volunteer-driven fire district. And, when an emergency does strike, the program has played a significant role in bridging the gap between residents and 911.

Twice, Pirotto has knocked on the door while someone was actively having a stroke. When the area experienced flooding, power outages and limited cell reception during the December storm, the outreach team knew who to check on. They found two residents on oxygen who were unable to get their generator going for one reason or another.

“It's knowing your customer, knowing their needs, and knowing when their needs might be compromised,” said Pirotto.

LWFR’s Community Outreach Program is supported by the North Central Community Care Hub (CCH), led in collaboration by Thriving Together NCW, Action Health Partners (AHP) and Advance. The North Central CCH is a regional network that connects community-based organizations with administrative coordination, funding, training and tools to help residents navigate health and social services. 

“One of the terms that we've used in the past to try to explain this work is ‘care traffic controllers,’” said AHP Executive Director Deb Miller. “An airport can't efficiently run without air traffic controllers…Care traffic controllers ensure that people are getting exactly what they need without having to go to 100 different places right to fill those gaps.”

Under this structure, AHP serves as an intermediary between large funders and local organizations, such as LWFR’s Community Outreach Program, helping provide the administrative infrastructure needed to move the funding to on-the-ground services. This model reduces barriers that typically block small organizations from funding and prevent many residents from qualifying for help.

“There's fewer restrictions, and we can help more people, regardless of insurance or income or those kinds of things,” said Miller. “I think that's important, because I think any of us in this world can admit that there's been a time when we've needed help and we don't know where to turn.”

For LWFR’s Community Outreach Program, which is volunteer-driven, this is especially significant. AHP is able to cover the administrative costs of managing a funding contract and collecting and reporting data. As a result, local organizations have to spend less time competing for and managing their funding, and can instead funnel their resources into on-the-ground services.

“It's removing the silos and the competition between agencies to work more networked together to provide a whole safety net of services, if you will, to people in the communities,” said Miller.

Taylor Caldwell: 509-433-7276 or taylor@ward.media