93 frail elderly and adults with disabilities are enrolled in our Adult Day Care Center with between 75 and 80 coming each day now.  We provide nursing care, activities, nutritious food, transportation.  We currently serve breakfast lunch and a snack in the afternoon.

In Guardianship, we serve 320 people.  (We are appointed by the courts to serve as guardians in 39 counties in Texas when the judges determine that individuals don’t have capacity to make decisions for themselves and when there is no family member qualified and willing to serve.  We serve 261 people as Guardian of Person, 3 people as Guardian of Estate and 56 as Guardian of Person and Estate.)

442 are helped through our Money Management Program where we provide information, referral to other agencies, assistance with accessing services in addition to helping some make sure bills are paid, utilities remain on, etc.  Since those who need help with money management often need help with many other things, we work to make sure that they have the help they need.

We have 870 in our Independent Living Programs (We recruit, screen, train and organize volunteers to help people age in place.  They can stay in their own homes as long as possible.  With a little help through our Minor Household Repairs Program, Telephone Reassurance, Companion to the Doctor, and help changing light bulbs and mowing lawns, and other programs, many end up able to live out their lives at home.  And, these programs make it possible for us to build bridges between us and them so that when they have a problem like electricity being turned off or running out of medicine, they may call us and we can fix the problem while it is a small problem – before it becomes life threatening.)

This year we are reaching out to approximately 2,090 in our Quality of Life Programs (With programs like Adopt a Grandparent, Friendly Visiting, Pen Pals, Friends for Thanksgiving, and many more, we are helping lonely elderly and people with disabilities know they are loved.  Our Gifts for Grannies & Grandpas, too program reaches out to more than this, but it also provides gifts for people in our other programs who are alone and have no one to remember them on their birthdays and holidays.

She gave us this picture and said, “Show  this.  No one will know it’s me.”

His family had locked him in a shed behind his house for years.  He might have died in that shed, but one of his family members got mad at him and split his head open with a hoe.  The family took him to the emergency room.

Police told us later they were sure the family would never have taken him to the hospital if they had been able to figure out how to continue to collect his retirement check if he died.

We were asked to be his guardian and we made sure he had a safe place to live and that his money went to him.

We became his guardian so he could get the care that he needed. What a delightful man he turned out to be. I remember that he asked us to take him to get new frames for his glasses. He was quite specific. He did not want new lenses. They were just fine. He had broken his frames when he fell onto the railroad track. He just needed new frames. He wanted to go back to his optometrist. He knew exactly where the office was, even though he had not been there in over fifty years! Fortunately, the son of his optometrist had taken over the practice and still had his records. He was right about the lenses. The prescription had not changed!