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The Greene County Board of Health recently decided to discontinue a service with the local public health department.

Greene County Public Health Director Becky Wolf says the Board of Health voted on April 8th to terminate public health’s Homemaker services program. She describes the program as a home care aide would be in the client’s home to do light housekeeping, laundry and do various errands if needed. Wolf says that went into effect on April 20th. 

Wolf notes they have been challenged over the last 1.5 years and the Board of Health guides public health’s programming and says there were several factors that led to their decision to discontinue the service. Those factors included the resignation of the only home care aide, declining number of clients, inadequate funding and the reduced recruitment and retention of the quality staff to provide those services. 

“We got to the point where we didn’t have enough clients to be able to offer two homecare aides service, unless they were okay with not having very many hours and they didn’t want health insurance.”

Wolf shares her thoughts on the decision that the Board of Health had to make.

“For over 35 years public health has proudly cared for our residents in their homes. Many of them touched our hearts like beloved family members, sometimes we were the only ones that would be visiting with them. While we’re saddened to shudder that service but we also shared with our clients that we were going to remain committed to helping them find alternative services and providers.”

Wolf adds they had about 19 clients, when the most the program has had is around 40. She says the Board of Health wanted to also make sure they were being good stewards of county taxpayer funds, providing consistent and quality care for their services and there have been other agencies that have had to make tough decisions like this.