Health, housing and senior care needs highlight final Chelan grant presentations

CHELAN — The latest round of Chelan’s community grant presentations offered a close look at how much of the valley’s health care, housing, senior care and social-service coordination is operating on small budgets while competing for a share of limited city funding.

The program has a fixed funding pool, but a record number of organizations applied this year. On Feb. 10 the city heard from the first group of applicants. Presentations on Feb. 24 brought most of the remaining nonprofits before the council as officials move toward funding decisions.

Catharine Morehead, office referral manager for Chelan Valley Community Nurse, said the clinic operates on an annual budget of about $70,000, with nearly 40 percent coming from grants and much of the rest from donations and fundraisers.

“The one that we are currently using for our charts was one that I found out in an alley,” Morehead said of a file cabinet used for patient records. “It didn’t have a lock. And we put a lock into it, which sometimes sort of works.”

She said the organization is seeking funding for basic infrastructure, including a secure file cabinet, updated printing equipment and reliable technical support.

“We’ve depended on volunteers to provide some technical support for us,” Morehead said. “And what the unfortunate truth is, is that this doesn’t always keep people engaged.”

Chelan Valley Connect, a coalition of local health and social-service providers, asked the city for $500 to build a shared website to help residents find services in one place. The group meets monthly to coordinate care, Lake Chelan Health EMS Director Ray Eickmeyer told the council.

“We probably serve 20 percent of the valley with multiple different types of health-related social needs,” Eickmeyer said. “We have all these individual websites, but we don’t have what we call a resource website that just has everything.”

The coalition plans to organize information by category, including transportation and housing, with member agencies providing the labor to build and maintain the site.

Heritage Heights board president Melissa Robbins said the nonprofit assisted-living and memory-care facility remains the only one of its kind in Chelan and serves a large number of residents with limited incomes.

“Right now we have 38 people in our facility and 19 are Medicaid,” Robbins said. “We don’t discriminate on what people make. If you come and there’s a room, you can get it.”

She said funding awarded last year allowed the facility to upgrade its Wi-Fi, phone system and electronic medical records, reducing repair costs by $9,700 and allowing those savings to be redirected to resident care and activities.

Lake Chelan Valley Habitat for Humanity Executive Director Michelle Fanton described the organization’s work building affordable homes for families earning between 40 percent and 80 percent of area median income, as well as launching a new home-repair program.

Speaking about one partner family the organization has been able to help get into a home, Fanton said, “When [they] came to us and applied, not only did their family meet the need because their housing was unaffordable and the conditions in their housing were not great, they were basically on the verge that their rent had gone up and they were looking at leaving the valley.”

The organization said the repair program, developed with support from last year’s grant, has already allowed one resident with a new disability to remain in her home after accessibility improvements to her bathroom.

“Without accessibility in her bathroom, she would not be able to stay in the home that she grew up in,” Fanton said.

With the remaining applicants now heard, the council will move into the scoring and allocation phase, deciding how to distribute a fixed pool of funding among a record number of requests.

Andrew Simpson: 509-433-7626 or andrew@ward.media

Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that the annual budget for Chelan Valley Community Nurse is about $8,000. That figure referred to the amount the organization requested from the City of Chelan through the community grant program. The organization’s total annual budget is more than $70,000. The story has been updated to reflect the correct information.