Jasper’s director of Community Outreach Services is on her way to meet with the Alberta Human Services minister, after penning a resolution that passed at the Family and Community Support Services Association general assembly.
Kathleen Waxer’s resolution asked the organization to advocate for senior supports in Alberta communities. Since it passed in the general assembly, Waxer said she will likely now have a chance personally to make a pitch to the minister.
Helping senior citizens “age in place gracefully” is something Waxer is passionate about. But she’s frustrated that proper funding doesn’t exist for communities in Alberta to make that happen.
“For every other vulnerable population—for children and families, for people with developmental delays—there is funding available to address community health needs,” she said.
But in Alberta, that kind of funding does not exist for senior citizens.
COS provides some services to seniors in town, but that is mostly through other, less specific programs. Waxer said she’s been going after “droplets of funding” through grant applications, and that helps her provide support to vulnerable populations, “but there’s no money in the pool when it comes to outreach.”
A few years ago Jasper participated in a pilot program that saw the Alberta government fund a seniors outreach worker. It was a short-lived position, but according to the former president of the Jasper Seniors Society, David Prowse, it was an effective one.
Prowse still volunteers for the seniors society, occasionally driving the seniors bus. He remembered the old worker fondly.
He said she was a “real cracker jack,” and remembered her taking part in all kinds of seniors activities, and being incredibly supportive.
He saw a lot of seniors taking advantage of the outreach worker’s services, but then the position just ended and “that seemed to be the end of it.
“It certainly was very helpful to have a worker trained in social work reaching out to those who were encountering difficulties,” Prowse said.
“It made a big impact in a short time, and then they just cut it off,” Waxer said.
She explained that the province of Alberta provides a small sum of money to any community that chooses to participate in the Family and Community Support Services Program. That funding is split 80/20, with the province kicking in 80 per cent, and the Municipality of Jasper putting up the other 20 per cent of the funding.
With that funding, COS has to provide “preventative social programming,” but it’s not nearly enough. All of the outreach workers at COS, for example, are paid 100 per cent through grants.
Waxer pointed out that demographic shifts in our population mean there will be more seniors who need an outreach worker, and FCSS will likely be picking up a lot of that slack, because of the mandate of COS is to address the needs of the community.
But in Waxer’s view there’s not enough dollars to make that happen. In her motion she proposed a program that is essentially “one-stop shopping” for seniors outreach needs, funded by the provincial government.
“I just believe that there’s tremendous value in providing access to information, referral, assistance to overcoming barriers to being well and healthy,” she said.
Glenda Cornforth, the current president of the seniors society, said that there are many different kinds of seniors, but there’s no question that some do benefit immensely from the support an outreach worker provides.
“There’s others that are not able to get out, and these workers can be very helpful for them. They plan programs for them and get them to outings, and I think it benefits all of us.”
Trevor Nichols
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