Issue link: https://blog.providence.org/i/1367422
Orange County Community Resilience Fund Evaluation Report 23 delivery difficult. Adult Day Health Centers and Adult Day Service centers quickly had to close their doors to prevent COVID-19 spread among their clients, temporarily preventing delivery of services ranging from meals to occupational therapy and caregiver counseling to participants and their family caregivers. Many organizations have adapted by finding ways to reach participants in their caregivers through telehealth or via telephone, but it has not been easy. Therapies, classes, and more are delivered virtually. Providers are working to overcome barriers for some participants to receiving these services, such as lack of equipment, knowledge, or desire to engage online. Other innovations have included, outdoor solutions where services are provided outdoors at a safe distance, meal delivery and care/activity packages for participants, and "swing-by's" where caregivers drive their family members by the adult day centers to cope with social isolation. Most of the providers were able to receive COVID relief funding from federal, state, and philanthropic sources. However, as organizations that also receive much of their funding from reimbursable service provision and private pay, their budgets still struggle. Additionally, the California State budget process put Community Based Adults Services (CBAS), such as theirs on the chopping block, which seriously threatened the future of these organizations. Through collaborative advocacy, the proposed budget cuts were prevented. Moving forward, the biggest challenge for these organizations is planning for reopening when guidelines for reopening are constantly changing and in the face of that uncertainty. As they aim to plan with often conflicting and unclear information, they also have to find ways to maintain revenue streams to continue delivering their services. Arts and Culture Organizations Arts and culture organizations have suffered uniquely from the pandemic. Since most of these are reliant largely on fee-for-service income such as ticket sales, entry fees, or merchandise, they have seen a significant loss of revenue. According to an Arts OC report, in the first month of the shutdown alone, arts organizations lost at least 16 million dollars of revenue and almost 1 million admissions. The "false start" of reopening gave a short window of operation which quickly disappeared, while making organization incur expenses for PPE and other safe opening needs. While some have been able to offer remote content, the scale is not sufficient for their operations. When these organizations are able to reopen again, they will face capacity challenges due to social distancing and people's fear of crowded spaces. Finally, they have reported difficulty in raising revenue as funders and donors may prefer their dollars go to more critical safety net programs; the OC Arts and Culture Fund, discussed further in the philanthropic section, was created specifically to address this. As a result of these challenges, arts organizations have been more likely to have to reduce staff and dip into their reserves, and face a major crisis if partial shutdowns persists. Census 2020 COVID-19 and the safer at home order hit just as large-scale, in-person Census 2020 outreach targeted to reach the Hard to Count populations was set to take place. Despite this challenge, the Community Table – the network of Census outreach community partners that funded and trained through Charitable Ventures as the regional ACBO - remained focused on the goal of achieving a complete count. According to Sarah Middleton, who headed up the ACBO's census efforts, partners "responded with resilience and grace" finding ways to adapt and continue outreach. They dropped in-person canvassing and events and transitioned to digital outreach and phone banking, while many were responding to other COVID concerns in their own communities. Census Caravans brought car parades to particularly hard to count areas; this idea has been emulated all over the state. In addition, the collaborative, mission-centered infrastructure and funding was in place for Census outreach before COVID hit, which enabled partners to pivot into new methods of outreach nimbly. Furthermore, the