Heart of the Valley Services for Seniors

Before COVID-19, our services included escorted transportation (90% of our service requests and 80% of the transportation requests are for medical transportation), shopping and errands, handyman services, house projects, yardwork, paperwork, friendly visits, home safety checks, tech assistance, pet care and Hazardous Waste and Pharmaceutical pick up and disposal, as well as referral services. The onset of COVID-19 required our staff to begin working from their homes to develop "no-contact" services to help bridge the gap for our seniors who find themselves increasingly isolated. We ramped up our Friendly Caller Program with support from volunteers from PayPal, Oracle, Stanford, and area high schools who joined our dedicated Heart of the Valley volunteers which expanded into pen pal letters and cards, and we can always depend on our friends of Heart of the Valley for festive donations to make the holidays bright. As well as, tech and paperwork assistance, our referral service, and our Vaccine Angels who originally scheduled vaccination and transportation appointments for our clients, and recently ordered the Medical COVID Test kits for our clients as well. We offered "NO-CONTACT" outdoor services consisting of yardwork and handyman services and Household Hazardous Waste Pick Up and Disposal (HHW). In 2022, with COVID vaccinations only available for about a year, we continued to offer our "NO-CONTACT" telephone services to our still isolated senior clients, with volunteers from our corporate partners, local colleges & high schools and our big-hearted Heart of the Valley volunteers. Our Friendly Caller service (3,796 calls) continued to expand into pen pal letters (252) and our yearly holiday gifts delivered (305 donated made for Happy Holidays!). As well as tech and paperwork assistance, and our referral service (72 seniors have been provided referrals in our service area and 306 seniors from other parts of the Bay Area). Our Vaccine Angels ordered Medicare COVID Test Kits (1,250) for our clients, while our generous supporters and local nonprofits donated PPE (750) items that enabled Heart of the Valley volunteers to begin offering "NO-CONTACT" in home services, which we began in May, after we noticed a trend in our client's services requests indicting they were ready to allow volunteers into their homes for Handyman services and in-home projects help, as we continued to offer outdoor services consisting of Yardwork, Handyman and Hazardous Household Waste Pick up and Disposal Services (208 services = 6,240 miles driven by our wonderful and handy volunteers). However, due to the low number of transportation requests and the nature of our senior clients, 50% of which are over 80, 66% are at or below poverty level and 33% are disabled, we did not feel it was safe to begin providing transportation until mid-2023, and the HOV staff continues to provide services from home, as we are all seniors as well, and some of us are immunocompromised.