Commissioner Miller Celebrates 10th Annual Award to Texas Home-Delivered Meal Providers (1/26/2017)

Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller announced today the Texas Department of Agriculture (TDA) is awarding approximately $8.7 million to 181 organizations across Texas that serve meals to homebound elderly and disabled Texans. These grants are part of TDA’s Texans Feeding Texans: Home-Delivered Meal Grant Program, which is funded by the Texas Legislature. 2017 also marks the 10-year anniversary since TDA began administering the grant program.

The Texans Feeding Texans: Home-Delivered Meal Grant Program is a result of House Bill 407, which was passed by the 80th Texas Legislature in 2007. The bill allows home-delivered meal providers to supplement and extend their programs in order to feed more Texans when individual counties make a contributing grant to the meal provider organization. TDA has awarded more than $90 million in the past 10 years in the form of home-delivered meal grants, matched by around $25 million from counties across Texas. TDA makes approximately 180 awards every year that serve more than 130 Texas counties.

“The home-delivered meal program keeps people out of institutional care and in the comfort of their own homes for as long as possible,” Commissioner Miller said. “This saves taxpayers money. It also provides seniors and those with special needs with the opportunity to live where they are in a secure, happy and healthy environment.”

One of the grant recipients is the Visiting Nurses Association of Texas (VNA). This year, VNA received $1.1 million in funding from TDA for their home-delivered meals program. Today, Commissioner Miller presented VNA with a check and helped deliver meals to Dallas residents whose advancing age or disability make it very difficult or almost impossible to make their own meals.

“The funds are essential to helping keep our community healthy,” VNA President and CEO Katherine Krause said. “We are proud to partner with the State of Texas to deliver hot, nutritious meals to our local, homebound seniors and disabled clients. The TDA funds also help us leverage Dallas County dollars to assist in our mission of helping people age with dignity and independence at home.”

One of the recipients at Mabel Meshack White Manor said she really appreciates the meals, because she is not always able to afford groceries to prepare the kinds of full, healthy meals like those delivered by VNA. 

”We must do everything in our power to make sure our seniors and Texans with special needs never go hungry,” Commissioner Miller said. “This funding will help fill the stomachs and hearts of people who need it most. We’re giving them a helping hand, not a handout.”

For more information on the Texans Feeding Texans: Home-Delivered Meal Grant, visit TexasAgriculture.gov and click on the Grants & Services tab.