Fallbrook, Temecula connect on specialized senior services

A new link – perhaps the first of its kind for the two communities – has connected Fallbrook and Temecula.

This connection hinges on a key service that a Fallbrook nonprofit group provides area seniors. Temecula residents can now access this specialized adult day care service, and the Fallbrook group can mine a fast-growing market for new clients and public exposure.

“We have more capacity than we are able to fill in Fallbrook,” said Rachel A. Mason, executive director of the nonprofit Foundation for Senior Care. “So we thought, why not serve Temecula with what we have in abundance?”

This link, which took months to forge, gives the Foundation access to the parking lot at the Mary Phillips Senior Center in Old Town Temecula. The lot will now serve as a hub for the Foundation to pick up and drop off its Temecula-area clients.

The agreement also allows the Foundation to distribute materials at the center as a way to recruit clients for its fee-based service.

In return, Temecula now has a place to refer people who are seeking day care services for a senior relative or friend who has dementia or other heath care needs. A city worker hailed the pending arrangement in an April email as “Great news!”

The agreement was formally approved by Temecula City Council on June 14. It is the first such deal in recent memory that the city has struck with a Fallbrook nonprofit group.

The connection may aid Temecula as the city continues to mature, staff said in a June 14 report to the council. Seniors represented less than 10 percent of the community’s population when Temecula coalesced into a city in December 1989. Seniors now make up 25 percent of the city’s population, according to the report.

The connection will now put a new service within easy reach of Temecula-area seniors. The only such senior day care programs in the region operate in Fallbrook and Hemet, according to the city staff report.

The jump in the city’s senior population has fueled a corresponding increase in demand for more caregiver options, the report said.

The trips to and from the Mary Phillips Senior Center are expected to begin soon, Mason said. Both sides signed a memorandum of understanding before the arrangement could be finalized.

No money will change hands as a result of the deal. But the Foundation must insure its transit operations and meet other conditions required by the city.

Temecula has entered service and funding agreements with many nonprofit groups since it became a city. But most of those agreements have been with groups that are based in southwest Riverside County.

Formal connections with Fallbrook, an unincorporated community in northern San Diego County, have been rare.

But Mason has gained a solid footing in both areas. She moved to Temecula’s wine country nearly a decade ago, and worked for a hospice agency in that area before she was hired for her Fallbrook post in October.

Although just a few miles separate the two communities on Interstate 15, they have charted different courses as a series of growth booms rumbled through the region.

Fallbrook had a larger population than Temecula as the country emerged from World War II. For decades, Fallbrook boasted more stores, restaurants and services than its neighbor to the north.

But Fallbrook’s edge disappeared when I-15 replaced a looping state highway over a period that lasted from the 1960s through the 1980s. Highway 395, chunks of which still survive, threaded its way through the fledgling towns and cities of Poway, Escondido, Vista, Fallbrook, Rainbow, Temecula, Murrieta, Lake Elsinore, Perris, Val Verde, Alessandro, Riverside and Ontario.

Temecula had about 27,000 residents when its residents voted to become a city. The city soon achieved a regional dominance as it attracted car dealers, shopping centers and a regional mall. Those projects generated a broad stream of sales tax revenues that spurred the construction of road and freeway improvements, parks, community centers, museums and other amenities. The population of the 37-square-mile city is nearing 110,000, and it is expected to eventually peak at about 150,000 residents.

Growth has occurred at a much slower pace in Fallbrook, which boasts a quaint downtown located about five miles west of the freeway. Efforts to form a city stalled in Fallbrook, and its services are largely provided by county departments and a patchwork of nonprofit groups. Its current population hovers around 50,000.

As the trajectories of the two communities diverged over the years, so have their senior services programs.

Temecula runs its senior center as part of its Community Services Department. A range of city-funded activities and programs are offered there for active seniors.

Fallbrook’s senior services are fragmented, as a pair of separate nonprofit groups provides a range of offerings. Both rely on county and private grants, membership dues, fundraisers and other means of paying for their operations.

The Foundation traces its roots to the 1979 formation of the Fallbrook Hospital Foundation. The group shifted its focus toward seniors as the tiny hospital struggled to survive in a fast-changing medical landscape.

The Foundation provides a range of programs. Its day care center serves seniors with dementia or other medical needs. Rides are offered to medical appointments, shopping and other locations by volunteers who are reimbursed for their mileage. Computer training is offered to seniors in classroom settings.

Mason said the interactions with Temecula have spiked since Fallbrook’s hospital closed in November 2014 after more than 50 years of serving the community.

The hospital’s closure prompted some doctors and specialists to move or consolidate offices in Temecula or Murrieta. That shift has fueled a rise in ride requests to those cities, Mason said.

In an email prior to city approval of the joint agreement, Mason told Temecula staff that the Foundation’s Expanded Rides program provides 15 to 20 trips per month to Temecula or other points north of the county boundary.

As of July 7, three Temecula residents had enrolled in the adult day care program, which costs $70 a day. The Fallbrook facility is licensed to care for up to 30 clients a day, but it typically has fewer than 10 participants daily, Mason said in a recent telephone interview

Five Temecula residents were enrolled in the Foundation’s computer learning program, Mason said. The Foundation’s Care Advocates program, which advises or assists seniors in need, had 19 Temecula-area residents on its roster, she said.