Meals on Wheels Plus of Manatee reopens Daybreak Adult Day Center in Lakewood Ranch

Clients, volunteers and staff are happy to return to Daybreak Adult Day Center in Lakewood Ranch.

By Liz Ramos
| 9:00 a.m. December 9, 2021

Daybreak Adult Day Center staff members Gene Chilton, Jerry Gironda, Maribeth Phillips, Mari Holland, Kim Mullins and Ava Ehde are excited to reopen Daybreak Adult Day Center after more than a year of being closed due to COVID-19.

East County
News

After months of being shuttered due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Daybreak Adult Day Center of Lakewood Ranch was filled with talking and laughter Dec. 1.

Some clients sat in a circle playing a game. Every time a client was tossed a ball, they had to name a country that wasn’t previously mentioned.

Meanwhile, another group of clients sat quietly catching up with one another after spending months apart.

Parrish’s Dorothy Prileau, a Daybreak client, couldn’t wait until the center opened again. During the pandemic, she spent her days reading, watching TV and talking on the phone to her friend Barbara Roberge, who also is a Daybreak client.

About Daybreak Adult Day Center

Meals on Wheels Plus of Manatee’s Daybreak Adult Day Center provides a safe and secure environment for older adults who live at home with a loved one but cannot be left alone while the caregiver works or attends to other responsibilities.

Daybreak Adult Day Center is the only licensed adult day center in Manatee County.

The day center provides social, recreational and therapeutic activities for clients.

Some of the activities include fitness and flexibility, games, music, arts and crafts, bingo and journaling.

The day center is open 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Fridays.

Enrollment is $12 per hour, which includes the cost of all supplies, snacks and meals. Partial and full-day enrollment is available.

Meals on Wheels Plus can provide transportation for $15 per trip each way.

Scholarships might be available.

For more information, call 748-3001.

“I missed my friends here, especially Barbara,” Prileau said. “We would stay in touch by phone, but it’s not the same as sitting with her once a week.”

Prileau said she was “happy, happy and more happy” to be back at Daybreak.

Daybreak Adult Day Center, which is the only licensed adult day care center in Manatee County, opened for the first time Dec. 1 since March 20, 2020, when the center closed as the pandemic began.

“I woke up this morning, and I just said, ‘I can’t believe this day is finally here,’” said Maribeth Phillips, the president and CEO of Meals on Wheels Plus of Manatee, which provides Daybreak Adult Day Center. “It’s just been such a long time coming.”

Meals on Wheels Plus tried to open the day center in September, but the delta variant of COVID-19 was spreading, so the nonprofit postponed the reopening.

Another factor that went into the center not opening until Dec. 1 was the requirement of clients to come to the center.

Daybreak Adult Day Center client Barbara Roberge talks with staff member Mari Holland and her friend Dorothy Prileau, who also is a client.

Every client needs to get permission from a doctor to attend the day center and a tuberculosis shot, and they need to sign a COVID-19 waiver.

Kim Mullins, the nurse at Daybreak, also has to meet with each client.

Now that the facility is open, Meals on Wheels Plus staff members are taking extra health and safety precautions at the center including the addition of hands-free hand sanitizer, towel and soap dispensers, temperature checks before clients who are transported to the center get on the bus and air purifiers.

All volunteers and staff members of Daybreak Adult Day Center have received a COVID-19 vaccine.

Phillips said walking into Daybreak and seeing the clients having fun and enjoying themselves felt as though the center never closed.

“It was like this is where we left off,” Phillips said. “I call this a happy place, and I think the clients that come here feel it’s a happy place. Even before COVID, it just always felt like an atmosphere of fun.”

Prileau said she can’t wait to begin arts and crafts again. She still has some of the items she created during arts and crafts on display in her house, including a spoon rest in her kitchen, a doll made of wooden pieces sitting on her family room table and an outline of a seahorse filled with seashells.

Kent Wyckoff and Mary Doolin, who are both clients of Daybreak Adult Day Center, enjoy playing a game with clients.

“I never thought of myself as being an artsy person,” Prileau said. “I’m more of a musical person. I like singing. It was good seeing the fruits of my labor. It’s pretty special.”

Toni Muirhead, a Daybreak volunteer, said the center is an underutilized gem.

“It’s the camaraderie,” Muirhead said. “The people I volunteer with I become friends with. People are so caring here.”

Although Daybreak Adult Day Center opened with only about 10 clients, Phillips said the staff has received dozens of calls inquiring about the center, and staff has been giving tours of the center. The center is licensed to have 100 clients, and there is one staff member for every six clients.

“It’s such a critical program to offer not just for the loved ones who come but for the caregivers,” Phillips said. “It’s such an important program to give (caregivers) a break and to know their loved ones are well taken care of, they’re having fun when they come here, and they’re also getting nutrition because they get the same meal we offer to our home clients.”

Phillips said Daybreak opening is a sign the nonprofit is returning to normal and pre-pandemic times.

“I do feel things are opening up, which is why this is a great time to open Daybreak,” Phillips said.

The next step for the nonprofit is to begin Friendship Dining again. Friendship Dining, which was suspended due to COVID-19, gives people who are at least 60 years old an opportunity to gather for a meal to enjoy companionship, activities and a nutritious meal.