The COVID-19 crisis has helped shine a spotlight on some of the needs of local seniors.
Alison Silgardo, CEO of the Seniors Services Society, said the New West-based society has had to shift its focus in response to the current health crisis.
“We have also tripled the services that we deliver on the direct supports – on the food service, on grocery shopping, on support calls,” she said. “The numbers have gone up substantially.”
The society has three regular streams of programs for seniors, including housing services, support services (such as support calls, Meals on Wheels and grocery shopping) and capacity building, where it provides training to other organizations that work with seniors.
“They are normally seniors who are in transition,” Silgardo said. “They don’t necessarily need supports all the time, but at certain points that are difficult times they need enhanced support. Either they are coming out of hospital or they have had a surgery or they have lost a spouse or a partner and their funding stream has changed. So they need a lot of supports during that time to stabilize them to transition into a more stable, permanent situation. Those are pieces that COVID has really shone a light on.”
Because of COVID-19, the society has had to adjust some of its programming, such as including medication/prescription pickup for seniors – something it’s never offered before. While it normally offers its Meals on Wheels program twice a week, that service has also been expanded in response to the pandemic.
“We are now delivering twice a week, but three meals each time so that seniors now get six hot meals a week,” Silgardo said. “Just through us, we have 32 on that (meal) side and about 70 on the grocery shopping.”
The society has also had to recruit new volunteers because many of its existing volunteers were seniors themselves.
“They were wanting to help, but we have had to encourage our current volunteers, all 100 of them, to stay at home,” Silgardo said. “We had to bring on board a completely new band of volunteers, who have been amazing. It’s definitely given us an opportunity to recognize that we need to diversify our volunteer base moving forward.”
Most of the existing volunteers have continued to support the society by making calls to a couple hundred seniors, which they can safely do from home.
“Any senior that we have had any interaction with, whether they have been in housing or wanted a friendly call or not, we call any senior we have been involved with twice a week,” Silgardo said. “We just try and keep on top of it.”
Silgardo is a member of the seniors and persons with disabilities working group, one of several task forces established by the City of New Westminster in response to the pandemic. It’s responded to a variety of issues, including ensuring seniors have access to meals and can get delivery of items from the food bank if they can’t get there themselves.
Silgardo said the city has had an “outstanding” response to the needs of local seniors.
“It’s busy, but so amazing – just the outpouring of support,” she said. “The seamless way that the city and the Seniors Services Society work together is completely unreal.”
Silgardo praised the efforts of many community members, volunteers and businesses that have worked at helping local seniors during the pandemic.
“This whole COVID thing has given us a new perspective on seniors,” she said. “One of the challenges, in the Lower Mainland in general, is that there are no seniors-dedicated shelters.”
According to Silgardo, seniors who suddenly find themselves homeless may be reluctant to go to existing shelter facilities.
“They are very concerned because most of them are not people who are street-entrenched,” she said. “It’s because of a spousal death. They have always had their own home. For financial reasons, they have found themselves in this position, but they have never lived on the street. They don’t know how to navigate it, which is very different.”
Despite the belief that many baby boomers have it easy, that’s not the case for all seniors, Silgardo said.
“There is a genuine sense that they are comfortable, they have pensions, and they are from a time when things were good. But, the reality is the economics of that has not always kept up and we are finding more and more who are finding themselves financially pushed into this – just the difference between accessing the food bank and being able to buy groceries,” she said. “They are a very proud people, so they don’t ask for help easily, either.”
