Meals on Wheels Tipperary Town

Tipperary Town Meals on Wheels service operates from Tipperary Community Services Centre. We currently deliver on average 120 meals per day to Tipperary Town and roughly a 10km catchment area. The Meals on Wheels service is available to everyone that wishes to avail of the service. We deliver to the elderly, but we also deliver to anyone who is living alone, anyone recovering at home from illness or operation, anyone who does not have the resources to cook a daily hot meal and indeed anyone who would just like a daily hot meal delivered. Our service comes under Section 39 funding as we provide a service for the HSE. This funding is vital but only covers about 10% of our overall Meals on Wheels costs. The charge for a Meals on Wheels daily delivery of Soup, Dinner and Dessert is only €5 pp. This challenges us to source our raw materials at the best possible price while equally maintaining a high quality of homemade food and service. We are indebted to the Food cloud programme for some of these raw materials weekly. Our services is supported by 16 CE scheme staff that help to run this service. We have three fulltime staff and one fulltime volunteer.

Fundraising and donations play a huge part in keeping our service functioning, especially the costs of keeping our commercial kitchen up to the highest standards and regulations required. To help with some of the costs we operate a community café which serves tea, coffee, homemade scones and buns and the Meals on Wheels dinner offering for lunches. The café is open to everyone and has become a social outlet, as much as a restaurant for many of our customers.

Over the last few years we have began some upgrades to our building but in particular our Kitchen. The final part of the plan is to upgrade our flooring from old ceramic tiles to non slip, hygienic commercial kitchen flooring. This project itself will cost in the region of €8000. This fundraiser will go directly towards the costs of this project.