Community Action Partnership of Northwest Montana is one of the biggest nonprofit organizations in the region. With all of the things the organization offers to community members, it can be easy to overlook the group as a mess of red tape or complicated transactions.

This is a mistake for several reasons, but especially for seniors, since within the office on Main Street in Kalispell are some truly life-changing programs. First among these are the efforts the partnership puts toward keeping seniors in their own homes as part of Personal Touch Home Care.

Vien Emery, a licensed practical nurse at the nonprofit, said living at home is a simple way to keep seniors happy and healthy.

“People thrive more when they live at home,” Emery said. “Our program allows people to live independently. So if somebody’s hands are so arthritic they can’t button up a shirt, we send someone to their home to assist them. Why should they be subjected to a nursing home?”

Long-term care facilities aren’t a bad thing, according to the program’s nurses, but if people have the ability to do most things by themselves and stay in their homes, they should be able to do that.

The program has 40 care attendants. Some have a tenure reaching back to 1995 or earlier, when the program was officially included in Community Action Partnership’s offerings. Together, the attendants serve 55 seniors in the community through a mix of private pay and Medicaid.

What each caregiver provides is different for each senior, but registered nurse Rachelle Centner said the common theme is to give someone the dignity of staying in his or her own home.

“They provide for basic human needs,” Centner said of the caregivers.

Caregivers provide for people who need a wide range of assistance, she added.

“They take care of people who access the community as much as you and I, to people who are bed bound,” Centner said. “It’s kind of like informal case management.”

Cassidy Kipp, Personal Touch Home Care’s program manager, said the caretakers can do things as simple but necessary as feeding and bathing the seniors, to more complex tasks such as helping them exercise or go to the grocery store.

“There’s a lot of clients that don’t have family,” Emery said. “They rely on us to provide for them.”

Centner said she thinks the program is fortunate to draw upon the large resources of Community Action Partnership. It allows for help to get where it needs to with some compassionate caretakers.

“We have an ethical and professional obligation to reach out to these community members,” Kipp said. “The greatest gift we can give is to keep people in charge of their own lives.”

One program Kipp is excited about is the Vials of Life, which gives seniors a pill bottle that has lists of medications, doctors and other vital facts that could be the difference between life and death. Kipp said anybody who wants a vial can come to the office, as the partnership has 10,000 of them.

The program is highly accessible, Kipp said. The way to get yourself, a neighbor or a loved one on the list is to simply give the partnership a call at 758-5454. A worker will go out to see what needs doing. 

“There’s no waiting list,” Emery said. “If you have a neighbor, put in the name and phone number, and we’ll do what we can.”

For more information about Personal Touch Home Care, as well as the many other programs Community Action Partnership offers community members, visit www.capnm.net.

Reporter Ryan Murray may be reached at 758-4436 or by email at rmurray@dailyinterlake.com.