Your Health is our Paramount Concern

To Our Members, Friends and Guests
What We’re Doing During the Pandemic:

Your health, well-being, and safety are our top concerns, so we are taking necessary precautions to keep everyone safe.

1. We suspended most in-person public programming while continuously running essential nutritional services that we rapidly changed to reduce the risk of transmission. Importantly, we have kept food and supplies available for a rising tide of folks in need.

• We continue to receive information and service request calls from throughout the community. CCSC is a great first call to make to learn about services, resources, and referrals for seniors.

• We are making regular outgoing calls to check-in with anyone who wants one. If you or anyone you know would like to hear a friendly voice checking-in regularly, with updated community resources, please call or email the senior center.

• Importantly, we are rapidly moving our in-person classes and gatherings online—many familiar activities, some new ones—keeping us connected via a virtual Cathedral City Senior Center.

Virtual programming accommodates digital seniors, and it is especially vital while we cannot gather in person. We appreciate your patience as we try to evolve our services in this way. It is important to us that our virtual offerings and gatherings keep that distinctive, personal culture that sets Cathedral City Senior Center apart. We will offer tech training online to learn how-to or better use Zoom, Facebook Live, and other digital options.

Please check our Facebook page and website for an evolving menu of programs. You will see CCSC-branded classes with local instructors, as well as online subscription content offered by national providers, free to you thanks to underwriting from generous CCSC donors. Plus, we will host online gatherings for us all visit, see and speak with one another again!

Mission Statement

The mission of the Cathedral City Senior Center is to improve the quality of life for seniors 55+ living in Cathedral City and the surrounding communities. The purpose of the center is to assist all seniors from the active to the home-bound by providing services that channel energy, relieve suffering, and foster health, happiness, and well-being.

Our Emergency Preparedness Plan for Covid 19

In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Cathedral City Senior Center board of directors has revised its Emergency Preparedness/COVID-19 Response Taskforce recommendations and officially approved them at its last board meeting on June 23, 2020.

These new rules and regulations cover everything from who can be in the building, discontinued use of computers, handing out of library books, and access to durable medical equipment.  Also, it sets criteria for how and when the building will be opened to the public once government agencies indicate it is safe to do so.

For now, only paid staff, volunteers with specific duties related to essential services, and cleaning crew will be allowed in the building. While in the building, these individuals will have to wear masks and maintain social distancing.

Essential programs have continued in a modified format to reduce contact, and they will remain integral. For instance, we will continue to distribute our daily Meals on Wheels lunches to clients, but outside of the physical building rather than in-person dining. Also, the food pantry distribution will continue primarily outside the building.

Also, organizations wishing to rent the building should contact the center, although we have suspended nearly all facility rentals. Any rental organizations must follow all rules and regulations as outlined by the State, County, and City governments. We will sanitize the building before and after any rental occupancy.

Currently, the timetable for public reopening of Cathedral City Senior Center is dependent upon containment of the pandemic. In the meantime, staff and volunteers will be available to arrange and provide resources and information by phone Monday through Friday from 9 am to 1 pm.

There are things we can all do to affect this timetable. To speed up the reopening of Cathedral City Senior Center, for smaller format, in-person, center-based activities again, and reduce the chance of being infected with the novel coronavirus, we’ve culled ideas and tips from a variety of online sources.  See HELPFUL IDEAS & TIPS below.

For more information about this emergency preparedness plan or if you have other ideas or concerns, please contact Geoff Corbin, Executive Director: 760-321-1548 – geoff@cathedralcenter.org

Please check our website, www.cathedralcenter.org and our Social Media Facebook Page: Cathedral City Senior Center, for periodic updates and the latest information.

Helpful Tips and Ideas For The Vulnerable During This Pandemic

For seniors, staying at home and avoiding crowds is paramount because they are among those at the highest risk of dreadful outcomes should they develop the voracious COVID-19 virus. If you are vulnerable:

1. Heed expert advice. The single most important thing anyone can do during this crisis is to follow the recommendations of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, especially if you’re in a high-risk category.
2. Make a safety plan. What would you do in an emergency while you’re self-isolating? Who would you call? How many supplies, from food to medicine, do you have on hand?
3. Skip large family gatherings like Sunday dinner. Isolate as much as possible, but if you do get together, keep it very small and practice excellent hygiene. Wash hands, cover sneezes, make sure nearby surfaces are disinfected, and don’t get too physically close to each other. Johns Hopkins Medicine and other health experts say to stay 6 feet or more away from others — especially the vulnerable.
4. Consider making use of your time to record memories. If you have treasured memories and stories you haven’t shared, it’s a good time to record them, whether digitally or on paper.

Remember, please do call us between the hours of 9 am and 1 pm if you need specific information.  You may also check our information pages on the Senior Center’s Website:
www.TheCCSC.org   And our Facebook Page:  Cathedral City Senior Center.

How You Can Help Others

And there are things neighbors, friends, family, and even strangers can do to make physical distancing bearable. For those at less risk:

1. If you hoarded, make it right. If you over-purchased basics like toilet paper and canned goods at the beginning of the crisis, donate some of it to our senior center food pantry so those who are vulnerable can get some. Give some to a neighbor or friend who can’t go out, as well.
2. Offer to be a text, phone, or errand buddy. Look around your neighborhood for those who are vulnerable, then leave a note on the door. “I can pick up groceries.” “We can text or talk on the phone.”
3. Offer to disinfect the kitchen and hard surfaces and other often-used areas. For hard surfaces, where possible, use one-part bleach with nine parts of water, per CDC guidelines.
4. Take the canine pals for a walk for those who can’t.
5. Be a “caremonger” by committing acts of kindness. Join with others in your neighborhood to reach out to the vulnerable. Just remember to keep a physical distance and practice good hygiene.
6. Use technology to be “together” for contact that’s virtual, not risky.
7. Help people sheltering-in-place to cultivate interests or find new ones. Being stuck inside is a terrific time to learn a new craft or skill or figure out something they may have been interested in but never had time to explore.
8. Buy the person an audiobook or podcast subscription. Some may need help navigating them at first.
9. Call regularly to check-in, but also make time to chat.
10. Run errands but consolidate to limit everyone’s exposure. Everyone, not just older people, should be staying away from others as much as possible. So, pick up groceries for others who can’t, but limit trips. You can leave the goods at the front door or make sure to maintain a distance when you enter a home. And sanitize before and after delivery.
11. Be a contact with out-of-town relatives in case of an emergency. Ask your vulnerable friends whose children aren’t nearby to share your phone number with their family in case they need your help and another set of watchful eyes.

Remember, please do call us between the hours of 9 am and 1 pm if you need specific information.  You may also check our information pages on the Senior Center’s Website:
www.TheCCSC.org   And our Facebook Page:  Cathedral City Senior Center.