CCS Reopens Doors To Serve Community In NeedCombined Community Services, 1195 Mariners Drive, Warsaw, celebrated opening its doors back up after the pandemic Thursday with a grand reopening.
CCS Executive Director Randy Polston said CCS closed down at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. CCS continued to watch the COVID infection rates since the pandemic started. When they saw COVID-19 numbers decrease in Kosciusko County, Polston said he had a meeting with CCS’ directors and identified Feb. 28 as the date to open up its doors again.
“Not the grand reopening, but let’s allow (people) to start coming in,” Polston said. “And at that point, when we opened up the doors, we had so many guests come. People, the first couple of days, we had a full house. People were just so excited to get back in here again.”
During the 4 to 6 p.m. grand reopening Thursday, people were able to take a tour of CCS.
During the pandemic, CCS modified its food pantry so it didn’t have to close it down.
Whenever guests come into CCS, there’s a lot of information CCS has to collect on them, Polston said. During the pandemic, the government said CCS didn’t need to collect as much information at that time.
CCS was able to do a drive-through system for the food pantry to make sure people got what they needed. Polston said CCS was able to get a camera system and a TV down in the food pantry and the cameras were fixed on the driveway, so the team could see people pull up. CCS staff communicated with people coming for the food pantry so they didn’t have to get out of their cars and staff would go down and get the information they needed. CCS had prestocked grocery carts with the essentials that people could put in their cars.
When it got to the point CCS was going to reopen, Polston said they didn’t change the drive-through system because it was working so well. But now, people can come in and a receptionist will collect the information needed and the intake person will take the person back to the office and get the rest of the information, whether they need food or clothes from the pantries. Then people will get what they need.
When CCS closed down, Polston had just worked with Winona IT to get a grant from K21 Health Foundation in order to get new computer and telephone systems for CCS. When the pandemic closed CCS down, people were able to work from home.
Polston said CCS staff in the self-sufficiency part of the organization were able to keep in contact with people through telephones and computers to help them. People are now able to make in-person appointments for the self-sufficiency part of CCS.
When asked what he hopes to bring to the community now that CCS’ doors are open again, Polston said, “The biggest thing is that our doors are open and we’re here for you. We’re already seeing it with inflation and everything going on in our nation. We’re getting a lot of people showing up here that need food. And so we’re back. And that’s the thing I’ve been telling everybody. We’re back and we’re here for you. And we’re seeing the guests come and they keep coming in, needing clothes, needing food. We’re back and we’re better than we were.”
