With more and more attention being paid to the health and welfare of the growing senior population in the area, Royal Palm Beach has just begun serving a free continental breakfast to seniors at the Royal Palm Beach Recreation Center, located at 100 Sweet Bay Lane.
The breakfast is part of the congregate meal program that also serves lunch daily at the same facility.
The village’s emphasis on senior services includes the Royal Palm Beach Village Council providing funding for the recently initiated senior ride sharing program and the seasonally active Young At Heart organization of some 350 members, as well as the Senior Referral Program and much more.
The Senior Referral Program provides a staffed information desk at the recreation center on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons from 1 to 3 p.m. to help seniors and their caregivers in identifying and accessing available services for seniors. For more information on the resource, call (561) 790-5188.
Sheryl Sawyer, a program director with the Village of Royal Palm Beach, said the new breakfast program serves a free continental breakfast of coffee, juice and rolls from 9 to 9:30 a.m. each weekday. She said that during these initial days since the new program has been instituted, only a handful of people have participated, but that should grow over time as awareness of the program grows.
“We have averaged 6 to 10 people at breakfast so far,” Sawyer said. “All they have to do is fill out a registration form prior to the day they want to start.”
The form is so the provider, the Department of Senior Services, which organizes the food and handles the funding, knows how many breakfasts to send over.
Staffed by senior volunteers, the new breakfast program is in a minimum three-month test window to see if there is a positive senior response.
Sawyer said that the lunch program draws an average of 40 to 60 people daily, but that its popularity took time to build. “It has been going on for years,” she said.
While the lunches provide a minimum of one-third of the United States Department of Agriculture’s daily dietary intake of nutrients that are recommended for good health, the continental breakfasts are an eye opener and morning starter.
“The camaraderie is more important than the food,” explained Sawyer, who said that the real benefit is not the nutrients of the morning meal, but the fact that attendees are meeting one another and communicating with peers. “They are up and out of the house and mixing with other people.”
For more information on the new breakfast program, call (561) 790-5149 or visit www.royalpalmbeach.com.
