With seniors spread across the mainland and islands, the Charlotte County Senior’s Resource Centre seeks to alleviate the barriers to aging in place.
Tony Miller is now retired after a nearly 40-year career at Ganong and another 15 after that as a pastoral associate at the McAdam church.
Whether it was rooming folks who needed shelter and an address to restart their lives or sharing his message of forgiveness from the pulpit; he found ways to give back every chance he could.
Now 73 and diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, Miller relies on the Nursing Home Without Walls (NHWW) program to help him through things like grant applications and home renovations to adapt his living spaces to his needs so he can stay in his home for as long as he can.
“I’m just in the early stages of Parkinson’s,” said Miller. “So I can still do quite a bit, you know? But again, it comes back to being able to apply for government grants and loans. I probably wouldn’t have gotten the $600 senior benefit.”
He said navigating the increasing digital hoops required to apply for the different grant applications is one of the things the Charlotte County Seniors Resource Centre (CCSRC) has helped him through.
“I can just look at that card and see if any of it applies to me or I need any of it,” said Miller referring to the centre’s pamphlet he still has pinned up on his wall.
The small pamphlet outlines what the centre offers and how to contact them.
“You became a client, then we did the process of applying for the low-income senior benefit, and then we did the home repair, and we just redid your low-income senior benefit,” Emma Keech said to Miller sitting across from him in his adapted Saint Andrews home.
Keech is the resource manager at the CCSRC and oversees the day-to-day operations.
Now that Miller is a client of the centre, Keech can apply for the loan with his consent, alleviating the digital technicalities that would have been barriers for Miller in the past. She said this allows seniors to more easily access the government programs designed to help them.
“I consider myself very fortunate because I was part of the Healthy Senior’s Pilot Project and so I was able to be privy to the conversations of what the community needed,” said Keech.
She was a part of the initial consultations with the community through the Healthy Seniors Pilot Project. This project is what led to the creation of the Nursing Home Without Walls program.
Through the Healthy Senior’s Pilot Project, a $75 million agreement with the federal government and the province to support research initiatives related to how governments can better serve seniors whether in their home or in care facilities.
The Nursing Home Without Walls program is operated out of certain health centres around the province and funded through the provincial government. While not directly connected to any traditional physical nursing home, it supports seniors through things in the comfort of their own home like how to navigate programs and services, check-in visits, transportation, special equipment loans, home improvements, and various other supports.
It aims to be as adaptable as possible to allow it to meet the needs of a diverse group of seniors in the community.
Through consultations and discussions with seniors in the community this program was designed to best tackle the issues that were presented. There were hundreds of ideas that came about through those consultations but the ones they narrowed down on were senior activity spaces like pools for working out and therapy, a senior resource centre, and community kitchen.
These ideas all take cooperation from various levels of government. From municipalities making the space available, to the province and the federal government to meet the funding demands.
“We are community driven,” said Keech. “So we’ve had people come to us looking to apply for the dental program, but they don’t necessarily have the know-how.”
She said they let the client tell them what they need but they also make suggestions for things that could be eligible for that would not be exposed to the general public.
It could be even just suggesting seniors attend events happening in the community that the team is aware of.
In Tony Miller’s case, Keech was able to suggest he go to a Parkinson’s seminar where he learned a lot about how to cope with the disease. There he was able to get information, along with other seniors in the community sharing the experience of recent diagnoses. Without being a client of the seniors centre Miller may not have even known that was going on.
The CCSRC in Saint Andrews now operates across the county, with 411 clients across the region and many other seniors seeking information but not yet registered.
While the bulk of the operations are done in Saint Andrews the center also operates three other satellite centres in Grand Manan, Eastern Charlotte, and Campobello Island. Keech floats between them but each has one dedicated staff member serving clients in each community.
“We do consider the service that we’re the area that we’re servicing remote,” said Keech.
“Recently we had a challenge on Campobello. Our coordinator there had to navigate several community members needing passport photos. She was able to organize with a local couple here to go over to provide photographs being taken,” she said “But to navigate going through the border, the mayor of Campobello brought his boat over to the Saint Andrews wharf, picked up this couple, and then actually took them over to the island where they took 74 passport photos that day ranging from three months old to 94 years old.”
Keech said serving a community across small rural communities and islands creates unique issues for serving seniors but they have found ways around.
As New Brunswick’s population continues to skew above 65, the strain on healthcare in the province to provide care to seniors is increasing. To meet that demand the province is encouraging programs like the NHWW program to keep seniors out of hospitals and in the comfort of their own homes for longer.
“The ideal situation is that people do not find themselves in the hospital in the first place because they can get the care they need at home,” said New Brunswick Premier Susan Holt on the program.
In the same press conference, she said everyone wants to see movement on curbing the provinces healthcare woes but given the projects of the provinces age distribution it will be harder for the province to keep up with demand.
During her recent tour through Southwest New Brunswick she stopped in at the Charlotte County Seniors Resource Centre while in Saint Andrews.
Watch: Susan Holt on CHCO-TV while on her tour of Southwest New Brunswick
“We know this program is making a real impact in our communities. There are currently more than 3,500 participants in the program at 27 partner sites across the province – and that number is continuing to grow,” said Hon. Lyne Chantal Boudreau, N.B. minister responsible for seniors.
But the program still has a long way to go.
“We are proposing to build a new nursing home that would include space and purpose built space for the people and for the adult day program which must meet provincial regulations,” said Caroline Davies, chair of the Charlotte County Senior Resource Center Advisory Committee.
She said there is no space currently in the community that would meet the need or one that could be adapted at this time so until they get a new facility they cannot implement everything they know seniors need in the community.
One of these such spaces would be a community kitchen, which they are currently looking to make available through partnership with the community.
But space is not the only barrier to expanding the program. With all new things, there needs to be an awareness of what the seniors resource centre can provide.
“One of the big things that the team here has been doing is meeting with municipalities, meeting with medical practitioners, meeting with other services agencies to say that they exist and that to try and get them aware that there are services that are available that people can refer to so they can stay in their homes,” said Davies.
While the province plays a factor in how these programs are funded, municipalities play a major role in providing the space and local infrastructure that contributes to the success of the program.
“If you look at the Municipality of Saint Andrews, they have given us this office space at a very reasonable rent which allows us to open up a lot earlier than we would have otherwise.”
Davies said municipalities, on top of the physical infrastructure, play a role in funding and communicating the program to their communities.
To her it is in the best interest of communities to get involved with resources for seniors because it keeps them in their homes and in the community longer. Keeping them from relocating to larger cities like Saint John or Fredericton because of resource access.
“You don’t want to see a decrease in your population. You want to see people moving to your communities. You want to see the grandparents staying where their children and grandchildren are because otherwise you might lose all the generations,” said Davies.
She said the next steps for the program to continue will be for the provincial government to approve the new complex so they can start to build the facilities for the adult day program, therapy pool, and potentially a community kitchen.
Outside of physical infrastructure needs, the centre also grapples with a dispersed community.
That fact of living in the rural New Brunswick community means that you need access to a vehicle for anything. Keech said that is something she has been hearing a lot from seniors in Charlotte County and something they are continuing to try and solve.
“Other Nursing Home Without Walls programs have a bus they can leverage from the nursing home,” said Keech. “We do not have that luxury here. So we will have to navigate that piece, but it’s going to take everybody working together to overcome the transportation issue.”
There are no barriers to entry for the program. While they do receive a lot of their clients through doctor referrals, the only requirement is to be over 55.
“I believe everyone wants to see the light at the end of the tunnel but with our projections it will not be ready for tomorrow,” said Holt.
But the CCSRC is moving along, providing care to the seniors in need across the region.
If you want more information about the services provided by the Charlotte County Senior’s Resource Centre and the Nursing Home Without Walls program, you can contact Emma Keech and the rest of the team at: office@charlottecountyseniors.ca
You can also attend their Seniors Expo on Thursday, Sept. 25 at the Garcelon Civic Centre from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m..
